The quality disconnect.

A business-to-business research project we just conducted sheds some out-of-the-industry light on the gap between what shoppers say to us and what many of the people and companies that serve them tell each other. Many food industry people believe they are delivering the best quality products and services they can, while many consumers believe the industry is delivering the least quality they can get away with. In interviewing employees and customers in an other-than-food industry, we found that 50 percent of the employees said that the company we were studying stood for quality while none of the customers used the word "quality" in describing what the company or its major brand stood for.

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