Also, do stock photos drive clickthroughs?

We're not going to pretend that there is anything like a definitive to the answer to the question that launched a recent thread on our forums, but it's as relevant as ever, what with the launch of a certain new product this week and the stories about the popular mythology surrounding that company that makes the aforementioned product. The OP cites the trend of crowdsourced ratings/reviews as an indicator for reliability, which is arguably one criteria for quality, but the question remains open-ended: Does Quality Sell the Product?

Much of the ambiguity simply has to do with the term itself; seeing as "quality" is essentially a concept when presented without a qualifier, Google suggested 'assurance' and 'control' (words that make for interesting and somewhat disparate associations, if you want to get meta) for the image search that yielded the leading image. But on a more practical level, it's useful to distinguish between 'quality' and other, well, qualities: Michael DiTullo offers a negative definition by offering a list of other factors; other forumites focus on price or the related but more abstract notion of value. Meanwhile, Ray Jepson broadens the definition of the product from the artifact itself to the experience of using it... to reiterate the relationship between quality and value.

Of course, this being a longtime Industrial Design Website & Resource, participants turn to tools as examples—in fact, the very first reply refers to Harbor Freight (vs. Craftsman) as an example of "good enough" as opposed to "the best." (Robert Pirsig's rumination on this topic comes up a dozen posts later.)

But back to Harbor Freight, here's a brief history of the discount hardware store... which might be contrasted with the saying: "Every Harbor Freight tool eventually becomes a hammer."

Join the discussion: Does Quality Sell the Product?