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Detroit's New Quality Gap
For two decades, US automakers have been engaged in a concerted push to narrow what was once a vast quality gap between them and their Japanese and European rivals. Today, US cars continue to lag behind their foreign competitors by most quality measures. But of bigger concern for the Big Three may be the fact that over the past few years, US consumers have changed their ideas about what defines quality—a shift that is making the uphill climb for the automakers even steeper.
The take-away: The highest priority of US automakers should be to extend their definition of quality from just making defect-free products to building cars with highly desirable attributes such as design and style. This change will require a new approach to product design, quality testing, and manufacturing.
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