ABSTRACT
Today's companies are experiencing vicious competition as never before. Much of this competition since the late 1970s has focused on quality. Quality is one of those elusive concepts which is easy to visualize but difficult to define. Quality also pays in the form of customer retention. Customer defections represent a significant cost to companies. Marketing has a unique opportunity to lead current and future total quality efforts. In fact, marketing can act as the driving force in achieving the primary objective of total quality: maximizing customer satisfaction at the lowest delivered cost. An integrated model shows the interrelationships between market orientation, total quality, and business profitability. According to S. Chatterjee and M. Yilmaz, the following are common misconceptions regarding TQM: Quality is conformance to requirements; Quality is free: The cost of quality is not simply the cost of nonconformance; Quality improves the bottom line.
