ABSTRACT

Virtually every decision to produce, buy or sell is influenced by quality, yet until this book was first published in 1992, there had been very little attempt to produce a comprehensive and practical theory for this. Here, Peter Bowbrick brings together different traditions of quality analysis from economics, marketing economics and marketing itself to identify the limitations of the different traditions of quality economics and some approaches to its analysis. Beginning with a definition of the subject and the concepts involved, this comprehensive title will be of particular value to students of Economics, Marketing and Business Studies.

chapter 1|12 pages

What is quality?

chapter 2|15 pages

The product as a variable

chapter 3|14 pages

What are brands and grades?

chapter 4|32 pages

What is search?

chapter 5|16 pages

Brands as search

chapter 6|21 pages

Sorting

chapter 7|19 pages

Uniformity

chapter 8|17 pages

Grades and search

chapter 9|22 pages

Compulsory minimum standards: good or bad?

chapter 10|7 pages

Price as an indicator of quality

chapter 11|9 pages

Market effects

chapter 12|19 pages

The costs of producing quality

chapter 13|8 pages

The time dimension

chapter 15|34 pages

Errors in characteristics theory

chapter 16|23 pages

The misuse of hedonic prices and costs

chapter 17|11 pages

Approaches to the economics of quality