ABSTRACT
Manufacturers like to think that they perceive a product in terms of objective characteristics, of a product specification that is measurable and controllable. Consumers have a purely subjective appreciation of the satisfactions that a product can give, an appreciation that may be strongly influenced by the objective characteristics, but that may not. Marketing professionals and economists may be concerned, not with the quality of an individual item, but with qualities of the product line as a whole: elasticity of dem and, market size, market segm ents, wastage rates and so on.
