Do Consumers Care About Quality?
In Saturday's edition of The Globe and Mail, lifestyle writer Karen Von Hahn penned a column titled Time to lose the subprime shopping habits. In it, she proposed the following "radical new austerity measure":
"Instead of throwing our money away on the immediate gratification of something for next to nothing, how about investing the same attention to quality in what we choose to wear and furnish our homes with as what we choose to eat?"
Von Hahn concedes that her proposal is "hardly a new idea." Quality is, she points out, something our grandparents actively sought when they made a purchase.
The call for a return to quality over price has been sounding in parts of our industry for the last few years. "We can't afford to buy CHEAP things" proclaimed a sign at the entrance to Amsterdam-based designer Satyendra Pakhalé's Personal Shopper display at the 2007 edition of Tendence Lifestyle, Messe Frankfurt's annual fall consumer show. Pakhalé explained that there should be a greater emphasis on quality over quantity; that we should cultivate a culture of creation rather than a culture of consumption; and that we need to have sustainable design.
Pakhalé said that his participation in the exhibition presented him with the opportunity to review "our way of living, looking at our consumption patterns, habits and above all at our global industrial culture." Unfortunately (or maybe in the long run, fortunately), the global recession is forcing us all to take a hard look at the way we live, consume and use the world's resources. Von Hahn writes: "…as the current crisis reveals--and we've learned when it comes to food--there are social costs to our consuming choices. By refusing to pay what it really costs to make anything properly, let alone here in North America, we have successfully shopped ourselves out of work, while delivering the coup de grace to the dying art of craftsmanship."
This is all true. And, I suspect that if you asked anyone in the street whether they valued quality, the answer would be a resounding "Yes." But, as in so much of life, there's no doubt a gap between what people say and what they actually do. In fact, I'm not sure that the younger generations, recognize or value quality in a lot of goods. All they've ever known is quantity. What's happening in your store? Do your customers care about quality?
