Tools for quality marketing
Quality marketing is a customer-oriented concept. It gives priority to customers’ satisfaction. Goods and services as wanted and desired by the customers should be made available at the right place, at a reasonable price, and at right time to satisfy the customers. This is the main philosophy of quality marketing. The main tools for quality marketing are as follows:-
1. Quality circle:
The quality circle is the group of employees from different departments but working in the same organization, who get together, hold regular discussions on the quality-related issues, find out reasons, recommend solutions and take reformative steps. The working process of this group becomes stepwise regarding problems. Quality circle is an important tool of management. It was developed in Japan in the 1960s with a view to suggesting solutions to high-level management. Such a group may consist of 5 to 12 members. This group works regularly to increase the quality of the product.
2. Training :
Responsibility for quality improvement should not be left on any single person or a single department. All the persons involved in the organization should be active and involved in it. So, there must be continuous training for all of the members of the organization. Training helps in increasing knowledge and skills and developing a positive attitude in an employee for doing a particular job. It enhances the capabilities of the employees to conduct the job in a better way.
3. Consumers’ ideas :
The quality of products or services is for consumers. So the quality should be as expected by the consumers. They are wise and rational. They know everything about goods or services. So, their ideas should be collected, analyzed and the quality of goods should be produced accordingly. Various ideas of many consumers should be collected and the best idea should be implemented to maintain the quality standard, and make qualitative improvement in any product compared to competitors’ products. As a result, the products become marketable.
4. Strategic role:
The marketers should get the opportunity to play a strategic role to make quality goods. If such a role is not available, the function of quality remains limited in papers. Quality should be in goods but not in advertisements. The marketers should make goods or services qualitative playing a strategic role.
5. Statistical tools:
Quality has different levels. They should not be distorted but maintained regularly. If high-quality goods have been supplied to markets once, the quality of the same goods should not be decreased later on. So, statistical tools can be used for giving regularity to the quality. If quality has been regularly maintained, the customers feel satisfied. As a result, organizational success can be achieved.
6. Benchmarking:
Benchmarking is the process of learning how other firms do exceptionally high-quality things. To learn or imitate the competitor or leading organization’s method of production, distribution and overall management is benchmarking. The concepts of benchmarking are simple and easy. From this good method of others can be learned and used easily in a short time.
The requirement for quality marketing
Quality marketing is the demand of time. Strategic commitment, the involvement of employees, quality materials, new technology, an improved method, and group efforts are needed for quality marketing.
1. Commitment
Commitment is necessary from top to bottom level management for quality. Such commitment brings changes in the culture of an organization to adopt quality as its goal, not as an ideal. As a result, there comes stability and regularity in the quality of goods or services.
2. Employees’ involvement:
The other important element of quality marketing is the involvement of employees. Quality is not the outcome of a single person or department; it is the result of group efforts. So, all the employees should be assigned jobs according to their capacity. Their ideas thought and creativity should be encouraged and implied in production.
3. Quality materials:
Quality is the output of good input. For quality, the materials used should be qualitative. If the input materials are of low quality, final goods also become of low quality. So, quality materials should be used to maintain the quality of any product.
4. New technology:
Technology helps to manufacture goods and services in a uniform and reliable way. It helps in producing goods and services with a certain standard. Besides, technology is used and developed to perform things in a better and effective way with excellent output.
5. Team effort:
A group should be formed involving the persons who are able to solve problems, use new technology, use statistical tools and work in the group. All departments and individuals should be coordinated. Ideas and skills should be shared among the team before implementation. The decision or action taken by two heads is better than one head.