Reputation is the primary stuff of perceived quality. Its power comes from an unstated analogy: that the quality of products today is similar to the quality of products yesterday, or the quality of goods in a new product line is similar to the quality of a company’s established products. In the early 1980s, Maytag introduced a new line of dishwashers. Needless to say, salespeople immediately emphasized the product’s reliability—not yet proven—because of the reputation of Maytag’s clothes washers and dryers.