How product quality dimensions relate to defining quality

Abstract

Uses survey results from a national sample of quality managers to examine the relationship between how a firm defines quality and what product quality dimensions it considers important to its competitive strategy. Garvin proposed a well‐known framework for thinking about product quality based on eight dimensions: performance, features, reliability, conformance, durability, serviceability, aesthetics, and perceived quality. Alternative definitions of quality have evolved from five different approaches: transcendent, product‐based, user‐based, manufacturing‐based, and value‐based. Of the five approaches to defining quality, the manufacturing firms in our sample subscribed most often to the user‐based definition. Using regression analysis within a factor analytic framework, some empirical support was found for hypothesized linkages between the product quality dimensions and the alternative definitions of quality. Specifically, the user‐based definition was related significantly to aesthetics and perceived quality, the manufacturing‐based definition to conformance, and the product‐based definition to performance and features.