Fruit and Vegetable Quality

ucts and services that satisfy or exceed the customer’s requirements”
(Surak and McAnelly, 1992, p. 80), while, according to Oliver (1997,
p. 98), it is “exceed the customer’s expectations.”
This is also called subjectivequality, the quality which the customer
or consumer perceives in the product. Quality (value) is attributed to the
product because, from the consumer’s point of view, it has some ad-
vantages and satisfies some wants. This differs from objectivequality,
which constitutes the total measurable or documentable attributes of a
product (see Grunert et al., 1996), or, as Oliver (1997, p. 151) puts it,
“What the consumer gets” in relation to “What the product has.” This
distinction was already made by Shewhart (1931) and maintained in the
later ISO definition of quality.
According to Oliver (1997), there is a general view that it is suffi-
cient to fulfil the customer’s expectations as suggested by Feigenbaum
(1961). However, Oliver (1997) emphasizes that firms that aim to go
further will do better at the expense of firms that merely aim at satis-
fying customers’ expectations. He recommends that, with regard to
maximizing customer satisfaction, firms should seek to create high ex-
pectations in the consumer but that it should still be possible for the
product to exceed these expectations.
The quality assessment of food products prior to purchase is based
on the consumer’s expectationsthat the product will satisfy a need,
whereas the overall quality assessment is also based on the consumer’s
experiences of the product. A general model has been developed
by Grunert et al. (1996), and a revised version is illustrated in Fig-
ure 11.1.
The model has been revised and simplified in several aspects: (1) the
dependent variable on the right side is generalized to an “overall qual-
ity” evaluation instead of “experienced purchase motive fulfillment” and
“future purchases” and the quality formation process is included (Poulsen
et al., 1996); (2) the term “cost” includes price and the case where price
acts as an extrinsic cue has been illustrated by a dotted arrow; (3) “pur-
chase decision” replaces “intention to buy” and “expected purchase ful-
fillment”; (4) “perceived cost cues” covers both “perceived cost cues”
and “perceived costs” and (5) the model is horizontal with objective
quality on the left side.
I consider the model general as earlier research contributions are in-
cluded: the distinction between extrinsic and intrinsic quality cues (Olson
and Jacoby, 1972), the distinction between objective and subjective qual-
ity (Shewhart, 1931), the distinction between expected and experienced

202 HOUSE OF QUALITY—AN INTEGRATED VIEW