Searching for the Definition of Perceived Quality

In late 1999, Scott Paton, then editor-in-chief and publisher of Quality Digest, asked his readers to provide him with their definitions of quality. The feedback was impressive: More than 80 responses were received, ranging “from the sublime to the ridiculous,” in Napoleon's words.

In his editorial column, Paton shared some of the proposed definitions. The editor’s picks consisted of two categories: the “more light-hearted definitions” and “the more serious definitions.” It is within the latter category that an interesting twofold definition of quality by Karl Albrecht of Karl Albrecht International appeared:
1. Objective quality is the degree of compliance of a process or its outcome with a predetermined set of criteria that are presumed essential to the ultimate value it provides. Example: the proper formulation of medicine.
2. Subjective quality is the level of perceived value reported by the person who benefits from a process or its outcome. It may subsume various intermediate quality measures, both objective and subjective. Example: the pain relief provided by medication (Paton, 2000).

Albrecht’s definition actually embraced two types of standards against which quality can be assessed. To understand this, one must accept that quality is a relational attribute, as was explained by Gerald F. Smith.¹ Relational attributes “apply to an entity but characterize it only in relationship to something else.” For example, length is an inherent property of an object, whereas proximity is a relational attribute that indicates how close an object is to a reference point.

In a similar fashion, quality is only knowable by comparing quality characteristics to an evaluative standard or criterion. Now, according to Smith, such standards are of two types: 1) the “more or less objective standard,” like the Baldrige Award guidelines or ISO 9000 standards; and 2) an evaluative standard that represents “the interests, needs, preferences, or values of an individual or group.”

Albrecht’s objective quality can be assessed against the “more or less objective standard.” It can be argued that the proper formulation of medicine is about adherence to specification, or, in the words of Philip Crosby, “conformity to requirements.”²

According to Paton, the very discussion of the meaning of quality got Crosby quite crossed (pun intended): “Can you imagine Accounting Digest asking for a definition of accounting?” he wrote.³ Crosby famously decried lofty definitions of quality, such as “goodness” or “excellence,” on the basis of the fact that excellence or goodness couldn’t be measured. Yet Smith astutely observed that “Here, Crosby is making the mistake of equating a concept’s meaning with its operationalization or method of measurement.”

In other words, just because conformity to requirements is easy to measure, we shouldn’t define quality so narrowly. As Smith put it: “When specifications are developed without knowledge of user needs and only achieve bare-boned product functionality, they are an inadequate quality standard.”

Conversely, subjective quality, in Albrecht’s definition, needs the evaluative standard that is based on user needs. Because the outcome of the process of drug administration, e.g., pain relief, is directly perceived by the consumer, and results in the consumer’s perceived value judgement, we are here dealing with perceived quality. “Intermediate quality measures” may include the ease of administration (e.g., swallowing) or rapid absorption.

As far back as 1991, Geoff Hutt, director of corporate quality at AT&T Istel, observed in his contribution to The TQM Magazine: “Quality is like a rainbow—it’s nothing more than a perception. Quality, like a rainbow, looks colourful and tangible from a distance. When you approach it, and try and grasp it, you realise the illusion. Both are merely perceptions, but both are capable of rational explanation—the perception of a rainbow is caused by the refraction of light in water droplets; the perception of quality is caused by the practice of good management.”⁴

During the past decade, scholars began to speak of the “increasing of subjectively perceived over objectively measured quality,” and even saw it as a current paradigm shift in quality management.⁵ However, perceived quality remains a vague and elusive concept, one that various scholars define differently. Unfortunately, many researchers don’t bother to provide even an operational definition of perceived quality (PQ) in their papers, as if there were a general agreement in literature on the meaning of the term, which clearly isn’t the case.

So what is this PQ stuff, anyhow? Well, it depends on whom you ask. If you were to ask the scholars of the American school of service marketing—A. Parasuraman, Valarie Zeithaml, and Leonard Berry (collectively known as PZB), who introduced the SERVQUAL instrument complete with the Gaps model, they would likely respond that PQ is the fundamental Gap 5 between the expected service and the perceived service. In other words, it’s the degree to which consumer perceptions of the service exceed or fall short of their expectations of the service. Across the Atlantic, Christian Grönroos and Evert Gummesson of the Nordic School of marketing thought, hold a similar view, as demonstrated by their model of service quality.

Things are quite different in the domain of physical products or goods. Here, PQ is often likened to craftsmanship, or it’s believed to be concerned with the aesthetical aspects of physical products. Craftsmanship is associated with the choice of fine materials, impeccable execution, and attention to detail. Aesthetical aspects involve the five senses of sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste; in other words, the way a physical product looks and feels to a particular person. For example, Marcus Roffey of Craftsmanship & Design Execution at Tesla believes that “Perceived Quality is the impression of excellence that a customer experiences about a product, brand, or business, derived through sight, sound, touch, and scent.”⁶

Harvard professor David A. Garvin preferred to view PQ through a lens of incomplete product information, possessed by consumers,⁷ a phenomenon that came to be known as information asymmetry. Garvin believed that without full knowledge of the product’s objective characteristics, consumers would resort to indirect measures, such as brand name, image, or advertising, to make their choice. Under conditions of damaging, opportunistic seller behavior, information asymmetry gives rise to counterfeiting—a pernicious crime that often uses the consumer’s limited product knowledge to pass off a fake as the product of original quality. It’s not uncommon for counterfeiters, especially in the market of luxury goods, to leverage superficial attractiveness and false labels to offer the consumer a surrogate of perceived quality—appealing yet illusive.

All of this signals much confusion surrounding the concept of perceived quality. Could we find a meaningful way to define PQ? Jointly with my co-author Adrienne Curry, a retired senior lecturer at the University of Stirling, Scotland, we have recently made a contribution to The TQM Journal titled “Perceived quality: in search of a definition.” This is our attempt to offer a new definition of perceived quality that will hopefully align the various perspectives of the term taken by different groups of researchers and practitioners. It can be found on the publisher’s website under the EarlyCite tab.

References
1. Smith, Gerald F. “The meaning of quality.” Total Quality Management, Vol. 4, No. 3, 1993, p. 235–244. 
2. Crosby, Philip B. Quality Is Free. McGraw-Hill, 1979.
3. Paton, Scott. “How Do You Define Quality?” Quality Digest, March 2000.
4. Hutt, Geoff. “Understanding the perception.” The TQM Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 3, 1999. 
5. Weckenmann, Albert; Akkasoglu, Goekhan; and Werner, Teresa. “Quality management—history and trends.” The TQM Journal, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2015.
6. Roffey, Marcus. “Perceived quality.”
7. Garvin, David A. “What Does ‘Product Quality’ Really Mean?” Sloan Management Review, Fall 1984.

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