Q&A - Why is quality so important in business?

Quality helps determine a firm’s success in a number of ways:

• Customer loyalty – they return, make repeat purchases and recommend the product or service to others.
• Strong brand reputation for quality
• Retailers want to stock the product
• As the product is perceived to be better value for money, it may command a premium price and will become more price inelastic
• Fewer returns and replacements lead to reduced costs
• Attracting and retaining good staff

These points can each help support the marketing function in a business. However, firms have to work hard to maintain and improve their reputation for quality, which can easily be damaged by a news story about a quality failure.