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aesthetics  A dimension of quality that includes looks, sound, and smells.
appraisal costs  Costs associated with product inspection, testing, and auditing of quality-related systems.
assurance  A dimension of quality that relates to the level of trust or confidence generated by employees.
benchmarking  Identification of best practices of other companies.
continuous improvement  A process of always seeking ways to improve existing processes and tasks.
cost of quality (COQ)  All of the costs associated with maintaining the quality of goods and services.
customer focus  The first principle of total quality management, which dictates that the customer determines what quality is.
durability  How long a product will last.
empathy  A dimension of quality that results from the approachability and sensitivity of employees.
external customer  Consumers and businesses that buy products and services.
external failure costs  Costs incurred when a customer is exposed to poor quality.
feature  A dimension of quality that consists of additional capabilities of products or services that can be added.
industry-focused benchmarking  The identification of the best practices among competitors.
internal customer  An entity of a business that receives an output of some other part of the same business.
Kano model  A business model that proposes that there are actually three important levels of quality characteristics for customers: must-be, one-dimensional, and delighters.
performance  A dimension of quality that results from specific characteristics and capabilities of the product or service.
prevention costs  Costs associated with efforts to prevent errors or defects from happening.
process-focused benchmarking  Benchmarking that focuses on similar processes of other companies, but those companies need not be competitors or even in the same industry.
recovery  The way a business deals with an external failure when trying to satisfy the customer despite the failure.
reliability  A dimension of quality resulting from a company’s consistency of performance.
reputation  A dimension of quality resulting from a company’s performance history.
responsiveness  A dimension of quality resulting from the company’s ability to respond quickly.
serviceability  A dimension of quality that consists of the amount of effort required to repair a product.
tangibles  A dimension of service quality that includes the physical items that are included in the service.
testing  A specific type of inspection used when a visual inspection cannot reveal whether products meet specifications.
total involvement  A commitment at all levels of the firm, from the very top to the very bottom.







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