Quality is the completeness of services or products which impact the level of customer satisfaction following a purchase (Havalder, 2010, p. 201). For an organization to maintain competitive advantage, quality control measures must be implemented so as to positively influence the expansion and retention of customers. Organizations may, however, face challenges in establishing quality control measures than accommodate both product and service values. The challenges are majorly attributed to the disparities in characteristics between these elements. This paper discusses some of the challenges in defining quality control measures for products versus services and explains how organizations can go about in establishing them.
Various differences between products and services make it difficult to separate quality demands between the two. These differences include; tangibility, variability and separability (Havalder, 2010, p. 204). Whereas the quality of products can be determined by touch, services are intangible. It may be difficult to determining the service level by just focusing on the intangibility part of it. For an organization to improve its service level, it has to focus on the tangible factors that affect it. Among these factors include people, place and infrastructure (Havaldar, 2010, p. 204). The firm should ensure that the individuals working with them are highly qualified and have courteous behavior. The location of the place should be attractive as well as the infrastructure. This offers comfort to the customer and assures him that professionals are taking care of his needs.
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Products may be purchased and consumed later. Services on the other hand are issued and consumed simultaneously. The quality of a product is highly determined by the manufacture or processing part. Putting this to consideration, it is important that the firm ensures that individuals offering the services are well trained to improve service quality. Where services may be offered by different individuals, products are mainly standardized. However, approaching this challenge by training and establishing a system of services that would be uniform is a sound solution to its variability characteristics (Havaldar, 2010, p. 205).
Service quality demands continuous assessment even when dealing with the customer while product quality may need to assess customer need just once before production. However, in most organizations, both service and product quality are critical components of its structure. Upon considering the above factors an organization is expected to perform well in the quality status of both its services and its products.
Works Cited
Havaldar, K. K. (2010). Business marketing: Text & Cases . 3 rd Ed. New York: Tata McGraw-Hill Education.