How we feel when we buy the product plays an important but difficult to quantify role in the overall product quality.
For years I've struggled to understand why upper management in many companies doesn't have a true quality focus as a fundamental strategic element in their business plan. As a career manufacturing manager, I always struggled to maintain and improve product quality, but it seemed upper management rarely shared my passion. Now that I've started my own business and I see all the issues in a company, I'm gaining some insight into this issue. While manufacturers care about actual product quality, upper management often is more concerned with perceived product quality.
To achieve my goal of producing a product that actually is high quality, we did a tremendous amount of expensive research and sourced higher-quality, higher-cost materials so that kids would have a high-quality experience with our product.