Question

Explain what is the Total Quality management and 4C’s Marketing Model?
Please provide the references.

Answer 1

Total Quality Management is a way to not only deliver high-quality products and services but to achieve higher customer satisfaction levels.

What is quality management?

To maintain the desired level of excellence in any project, we need to monitor all the activities and tasks. Quality Management is the act of achieving a benchmark level of quality through formulating a quality policy, quality planning, quality assurance and quality control for quality improvement.

Quality management ensures that there is a high quality of products and services delivered. As every product or service rendered is subjected to a thorough quality assurance process to ensure the outcome is reliable and durable.

Quality management ensures customer satisfaction as the product and services delivered aims to exceed the expectation levels of the customer. This eventually leads to customer loyalty.

Quality management increases efficiency and productivity that positively impact the revenues for a company.

The success of quality management initiatives depends on teamwork. Therefore it breeds team spirit within an organization.

At times, quality management is also referred to as Total Quality Management.

Total Quality Management is a process to ensure that all work aims toward the common goal of improving product quality or service. TQM also enhances the production process or process of delivering service. However, in TQM the emphasis lies on fact-based decision making which uses performance matrices to monitor progress

TQM Example: One of the most famous examples of total quality management is Toyota. Toyota implemented Kanban System to make its assembly line more efficient. The company decided to keep just enough inventories to fulfill customer orders as they were generated.

The 4 c's of marketing mix

• Cost – According to Lauterborn, price is not the only cost incurred when purchasing a product. Cost of conscience or opportunity cost is also part of the cost of product ownership.
  
• Consumer Wants and Needs – A company should only sell a product that addresses consumer demand. So, marketers and business researchers should carefully study the consumer wants and needs.
  
• Communication – According to Lauterborn, “promotion” is manipulative while communication is “cooperative”. Marketers should aim to create an open dialogue with potential clients based on their needs and wants.
  
• Convenience – The product should be readily available to the consumers. Marketers should strategically place the products in several visible distribution points.
• An example of this is Nokia, making lots of products, but failing to satisfy changing consumer needs and wants. The 4Cs also reminds us of the need to link the 4Ps to specific audience types through different market segment options to target.