In a free market economy a famine of consumer goods is not permitted to exist for very
long; market forces, in the form of entrepreneurial capitalism, respond to the imbalance of too
much cash chasing too few goods. The balance is redressed. Soon there is an abundance of
goods available to sop up the cash in the economy. The system overbalances in the other
direction, and an excess of goods bloats the market, rival brands competing for the consumers’
spending power. Now quality, which mattered not at all when things were scarce, matters
more than anything else now they are plentiful. So quality is a function of supply, once sellers’
markets have given way to buyers’. Of the three factors governing purchasing decisions – price,
service and quality – at a time when goods were scarce, service was the be-all and end-all,
‘make it … sell it’ was the order of the day. This is how things used to be in the halcyon days
of Western manufacturing, before a quality revolution exploded out of the East to shatter
complacency for evermore. As soon as goods became plentiful, price became the arbiter, but
price wars are too costly to support for very long, so quality inevitably becomes the primary
purchasing determinant, to use the language of the buying officer. This fact is borne out by
formal research, as well as by general observation and historical awareness.