What is Quality?
In our daily life, we always heard people talk about quality. Whether you are in the office, your workplace, shopping malls, among friends and even at home. What is Quality then?
Case A
On 22nd Oct 2009, I shop around a Digital Mall in Petaling Jaya, wanted to buy a laptop computer for my post retirement consultancy. I was in front of a few units of displayed laptops and the sales executive explained to me various difference with the displayed units.I could understand his explanation which tried to help me to make a decision what type of quality I wanted my laptop computer to have. To me, that is service quality, the way the sales executives explained about the different features among the various model displayed.
Case B
In August, 2009, I bought an external 500 MB harddisk for my computer data backup purpose. It came with a build in backup software which merely just a click of a button for a complete backup of my data. For the first time doing the backup, all my files from my laptop were copied into the harddisk. Then when I did my second round of backup, the backup function automatically identified and backup those files which has made changes only. This feature is cool as all the time, when I do my regular backup – actual I copied the files from the laptop to a harddisk, a dailog box always appeared asked me whether I want to override the existing files. This process take up time as I have to sit in front of the laptop to click the “yes” button. With this backup feature, I do not have to sit around which the backup is taking place. To me, this is a cool feature and I considered this as Quality.
For the above two cases ( A & B), QUALITY is defined as “meets or exceed your expectations”
Case C
I still remember during my teenage days, like most kids, I used to some battery operated toys. Yo know, when you got hold of a new battery operated toy, you like to show off to your friends and operate the toy in front of them. Unfortunately, your glory did not lat long enough because the battery operated toy just don’t last too long. Worst still, it don’t work anymore even you have changed to a new set of batteries. You likely curse and yelled ” What the heck, this new toy don’t even last for 1 day. What kind of Quality is this?”
Case D
It is likely that you make a purchased of DVD player make from certain country for dirt cheap price compared with some of the branded product. It look elegant, good features and most of all, it function as well as the branded unit. Although its brand is unknown in the market but it serves your purpose.
In both cases (C & D), QUALITY is then defined as “Fit for Use”. In case C, the toy don’t last long enough to play around, it has lost its functionality. It is not fit for use anymore. In case D, it has no brand or its brand is unknown but the DVD players work well for you. so, it is fit for use.
Sometimes, you may faced with this situation when you asked your friend why they pay such a high price for a product. Your friend replied as ” Value for Money”. What it really meant is your friend do not mind to pay a little more to get extra features that he think worth the extra cost. “Value for Money” is another aspect to define Quality in a day to day life.
