Quality is a significant measure of product differentiation, particularly in highly competitive markets abroad. Importers are likely to choose higher quality if all other factors are the same and they are also likely to pay a premium for higher quality. It is therefore essential that you give consideration to improving your product quality. You can improve quality in several ways:

• Improve the design of the product so that it is less complex, requires fewer components and can be produced at higher tolerances
• Adapt your production process to facility quality manufacture and reduce defects
• Introduce more quality inspections into your product process
• Adopt quality processes and standards such as ISO9000 and TQM
• Train your staff to be more quality conscious

As far as the product quality is concerned, you may need to find ways of improving the quality to match or exceed that of your competitors. For this reason, you may need to know what their quality is and this may necessitate you keeping tabs on your main competitors to see how their product is better than yours. Improving quality may mean implementing design improvements and improving your production process. Quality assurance will need to become one of your areas of focus.