Importance of quality for the consumers, the cost of non quality on the brand - From EDQC 2024

The conference in few words

Hervé Gomichon delivered an inspiring talk on the critical role of quality in driving consumer satisfaction and its profound impact on business success.He emphasized that quality is more than a concept—it is a business strategy for differentiation. By meeting both explicit and implicit consumer needs, businesses can achieve sustainable competitive advantages.

Key Themes:

Defining Quality and Its Importance:
- Quality goes beyond products; it encompasses customer satisfaction and fulfilling unmet needs.
- High quality leads to trust, loyalty, and positive recommendations.
Quality as a Business Strategy:
- Quality investments yield significant returns, enhancing both reputation and financial performance.
- It differentiates brands in competitive markets.
Consequences of Non-Quality:
- Non-quality incurs short-term costs including: - Wasted materials, production hours, and factory resources. -Losses in packaging, logistics, and brand image.
- Non-quality incurs long term costs such as consumer trust, recommendations, and ultimately threatens business survival.
Consumer Perception of Quality:
- Customers judge a brand not just by incidents but by its response to them. A strong, proactive reaction can mitigate damage and preserve trust.

He concludes the conference with tangible and intangible losses of neglecting quality, underscoring that quality is not just a cost but an investment in the future of a business.

The Speaker

Hervé Gomichon

Hervé Gomichon is a French professional, holding a DMV from Toulouse National Veterinary School. In 1986, he founded the first “vet junior enterprise” in Toulouse to assist food and pharmaceutical companies.

Hervé is the current Chairman of the French Vet School and has served as a board member of GFSI (Global Food Safety Initiative), MSC(Marine Stewardship Council), IFS , and ANSES (French food safety agency). He has participated in numerous technical and scientific programs as an attendee or speaker and completed an executive program at INSEAD.

His LinkedIn Profile

What to remember?

1 - Rethinking the paradigm, innovating, reverse how we take in account the “consumer thinking”.
2 - The consumer is attentive and selective, looking for emotion, consistency and rapid reaction, the best value for him (NPS) put ourself in his shoes. PERCEPTION = TRUTH
3 - Do not only fight the costs of accidental non-quality, also look for the costs of the consequences of structural non-quality.

4 - Non-quality is therefore fatal in the long term, the costs of non-quality are never sustainable.
5 - No longer waste quality resources: By limiting it to conformity and only to the processed side. By heavy structure complex processes and their consequences. Developing agility of the quality teams on “blue ocean”
6 - choice A or B; A= consumer=>organisation => products =>results
B = Budget =>organisation => products =>consumer
Think simpler, think consumer before any decision