Why Everything You Know About “Quality Products” Is Wrong
Brent Hodgson
Connecting business owners into world-leading business & tech programs Deakin Uni offers (for free), to create a resilient, internationally competitive, and tech-savvy new wave of Australian Small-to-Medium Companies.
There’s a myth around QUALITY.
How often have you heard:
“Quality matters.”
Or…
“The way to make sure your product or service sells well is to make it THE BEST IN THE WORLD!”
Or…
“When you present someone with a high-quality decision, product or service – the choice becomes obvious! You don’t need to use influence, sales or marketing tactics to convince someone!”
In fact, Australia, the slogan behind Arnott’s Biscuits is:
“There’s no substitute for quality.”
The truth is:
- When it comes to sales and decision-making, quality DOESN’T matter in the way you probably think it does.
- There ARE substitutes for quality.
- Most of the time, your customers CAN’T TELL what quality is – and that’s the reason why they’re buying your competitor’s inferior widget instead of your superior one.
- Studies have consistently shown that even the EXPERTS (people who SHOULD know better) have trouble distinguishing average products from high-quality products.
Yes, quality can be a shorthand way of talking about engineered precision, safety, or endurance. And it’s a good idea to invest a “high quality” parachute.
But more often than not, what we call “quality” isn’t a physical trait.
A quality meal, a quality wine, a quality service, a quality hotel, a quality shirt, a quality outfit, quality headphones, quality furniture…
More often than not “quality” is subjective or difficult to discern.
So, instead of being a set of physical characteristics, most of the time when we’re talking about quality we’re talking about a “feeling” or “sense”… Something based on social signals, biases, and mental shortcuts in our brain that can be (and are often!) tricked and triggered into making the wrong decision.
Over the coming days and weeks, I want to share some of these “misfires” in our brain with you (make sure you’re on my newsletter so you don’t miss out on any part of this series)…
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Header image 'Grange 2004' by Vincent Brown. Licensed and attributed under Creative Commons 2.0