Answer:
Enterprises usually adopt some quality practices to control the product quality during the manufacturing process in order to assure the delivery of qualitative good products to customers. The quality practices or quality management systems adopted by industries will further evolve due to the changes of quality concepts as time goes by. This chapter discusses the change of quality concepts and the related revolution of quality management systems in the past century. The quality concepts were gradually changed from the achievement of quality standards, satisfaction of customer needs, and expectations to customer delight. Since merely satisfying customers is not enough to ensure customer loyalty, the enterprises gradually focus on customers’ emotional responses and their delight in order to pursue their loyalty. The emotion of “delight” is composed of “joy” and “surprise,” which can be achieved as the customers’ latent requirements are satisfied. Thus, the concept of “customer delight” and the means to provide the innovative quality so as to meet the unsatisfied customers’ latent needs are elaborated on. Finally, a framework of innovation creation is developed that is based on the mining of customer's latent requirements. This outline will manifest the essential elements of the related operation steps.
