Competitors are emphasizing reliability in product quality

Symptom: Competitors in the industry are stressing their superior product quality.

Implications for the market:

• Quality and reliability usually represent large market segments in a hostile market.

• A competitor who achieves a unique reputation for high quality can attract and hold significant market share because quality is an advantage that is hard to duplicate.

  • Quality is often difficult to see and reverse engineer. It is not as easily observed as a price discount or as a more tangible feature benefit. This abstract nature of quality makes it hard to copy effectively.

  • Matching the quality reputation of a very good competitor involves significant commitments of money and time. Developing tighter quality controls and advertising to build a brand name both require significant investments and long time periods.

  • The payback for those investments may be long in coming since a reputation for quality builds slowly as customers learn through their own experience or through word of mouth about the supplier's quality.

• But reliability, in its broader sense, may be a more effective thrust for innovation.

  • In its broader sense, reliability includes important aspects of relationship such as on-time delivery, problem resolution, guarantee of supply in tight times and consistent market support.

  • These benefits are more subtle and more difficult for a competitor to measure and overcome.

  • In many markets, these reliability benefits outweigh differences in product quality in deciding a customer on his choice of supplier.