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The call for quality is not a new phenomenon. Manufacturers have implemented sophisticated quality management systems for more than half a century. To feed the quality drive in the business sector, a wide array of complex theoretical and statistical models have been developed over the years. The ISO9000, Total Quality Management, Advanced Product Quality Planning, Lean Manufacturing, Quality Circle, Bench Marking, and Six Sigma are some of the buzz words in the world of quality management. But the underlying objectives for most of these programs are product standardization and production process improvement.

Product standardization is about ensuring that all products within a given category are identical. Standardization efforts do not aim at improving the overall quality of the products, but at making sure that all products are of the same quality. A customer who walks into a McDonald's restaurant has certain expectations about the taste, flavor, volume, and design of a burger. McDonald's seeks to satisfy the customer's expectations by supplying identical burgers every time the customer visits the restaurant. For McDonald's, quality management is not about improving the nutritional value or the design or the taste of the burgers, but it is about ensuring that customers can enjoy identical burgers every time. Product standardization is an important measure to secure customer loyalty, but not to raise the quality of the end product.

Production process improvement focuses on the production process and operational efficiency. It aims at eliminating waste and inefficiency, but it does not address the quality of the end product. Six Sigma is one of the latest inventions in quality management. The system was developed by Motorola in 1981, and has allegedly saved the company millions of dollars by detecting and rectifying errors in production process. Process improvement is an important cost-saving measure. By eliminating errors, manufacturers minimize the possibility of customers returning defected products.

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As America's demographics became more stable and goods from the Third World saturated the US market, it became apparent that the low-cost production strategy was sustainable only in a static world, where there was no competition from outside and the market factors remained unchanged, or in a world where in order to meet changing market factors, companies could switch their strategic focus forward and back with no implications for their brand image. But the real world never works in this way. Market factors change frequently in a dynamic world, whereas brand images remain inflexible. When a company positions itself as a low-cost provider, it builds its brand accordingly. The brand image makes it hard for the company, though not impossible, to change its strategic focus from cost to quality when market factors change. It would be as hard for Ford to shift its brand image from one of a low-cost producer to a quality provider as it would be for McDonald's to switch over to French cuisine.

In an increasingly global market, the only viable option for US businesses is to produce high-quality products for the simple reason that the relatively high labor cost in the US will force American low-cost producers out of business, when competing with foreign suppliers.

The American challenge a hundred years ago was to build the country rapidly, and low-cost production was the answer. The struggle now is to rescue American businesses from competition from low-cost countries, and quality seems to be the only solution.

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The strategy of low-cost versus high-quality production has guided businesses for centuries, though it was formalized in 1980s by Michael Porter, who claimed that competitive edge was achieved by either focusing on cheap manufacturing or on quality products sold at a premium price, but not both (Porter himself used the term differentiation instead of quality. The application of quality in this article is the author's simplification). The key for Porter was to choose the strategy that enabled a business to specialize in one market segment only, instead of trying to be everything for everybody at the same time. In other words, for a business to succeed, Porter argued, it needed to specialize in supplying products that were either qualitatively indifferent but were affordable for low-budget consumers, or products that were qualitatively differentiated but targeted consumers willing to pay premium prices for them (see discussion on generic strategies in Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analysing Industries and Competitors, The Free Press 1980).

With a rapidly growing population and little competition from abroad, the obvious strategic choice for American businesses in the beginning of the twentieth century was mass production of cheap goods. Many new-comers to America were poor and had few resources. Thomas C. Cochran noted that the immigrants brought with them relatively little household goods. They wanted new supplies fast and at low cost, and were not in the position to haggle about quality (see: Challenges to American Values, Oxford University Press 1985, page 7). American businesses strategically positioned themselves to cater this growing market by supplying large volumes of affordable goods.

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The low-cost production comes with a high price for the environment. According to the United States Census Bureau, the average American generates about 1679 pounds of trash per year. Less than a quarter of this is recycled. The rest is buried in landfills or incinerated. The more cheap goods are consumed and dumped in the nature, the more the environment is harmed.

The low-cost production techniques that proved indispensable for American progress and prosperity in early twentieth century, turned out to be America's worst enemy in the long run.

America Must Put Quality atop Its Agenda

Faced with growing competition from other countries, a paradigm shift from cost saving to a focus on quality is required for American businesses to stay competitive at home and abroad. This requires a commitment at every stratum of the society: not only the business managers, but also the consumers and workers alike. Consumers must demand quality, business managers must put quality atop their agenda, and workers must produce quality.

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In addition to sweeping economic impact for American businesses, this phenomenon had political, cultural, and environmental ramifications. America's political power rose in the last century as a result of impressive economic performance. The decline in the US businesses led to erosion of America's political leverage abroad. Many countries increasingly looked east for a new rising superpower.

A vast literature has been produced on the cultural and social effects of mass production of low-priced goods. This discussion is beyond the scope of this article, but it is worth mentioning that mass production flooded the market with cheap goods that were designed to last for a limited period of time. On an individual level, easy access to cheap goods meant that American consumers developed a mundane materialistic relationship to household products: they would use them for a short time, become tired of them soon, and replace them. On a national level, Americans celebrated their success in generating enormous wealth, but their sense of national pride dissociated from American products. While Germans pride themselves in their Mercedes, and the French in their fine wines and scrumptious Brie, Americans saw no reason to link national pride to low-quality Ford or fatty burgers.