MARKETINGS LEAD ROLE IN TOTAL QUALITY

This article maintains that many industrial firms' lack of success in achieving customer satisfaction and profitability may be attributed to their continued orientation to the sales-buying concept. It specifies the marketing concept as an appropriate strategy and proposes adoption of the total quality concept as critical to its successful application. The quality function deployment process is presented as a mechanism both for determining exchange partner requirements and assuring conformance to those requirements, and we propose that the marketing function have a leadership role in administering the process.