Disparities in Quality Perceptions Between Small Firms and their Customers

Abstract

STEPHEN ROPER, NoIA HEWIET-DUNDAS and Brendan McFerran are with the Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Discussion of product quality in the context of small United Kingdom companies has largely related to the impact of quality certification. Product quality improvement will, however, only yield a competitive advantage if improvements are recognised and wanted by customers. This raises two key questions: first, how aware are small firms of their customers' priorities in improving quality? Second, how does small firms, assessment of their own product quality compare with that of their customers? To answer these questions, perceived relative quality indices were constructed for a group of small firms and their customers. Comparison of customer and supplier responses highlighted significant disparities. First, the small firms in the sample tended to over-emphasise the importance of intrinsic quality attributes while under-estimating the importance to their customers of extrinsic and service quality attributes. Second, there was a major disparity between the relative quality perceptions of the sample of suppliers and their customers. With one exception, small firms in the sample gave themselves a higher relative quality rating than that given by their customers. The results suggest that the sample firms, twothirds of whom were IS09000 registered, needed to re-evaluate their quality priorities. The results also suggest a potential role for development agencies as gatherers/providers of market information.