
Same word. Different places? Different meanings - sachitgupta
http://sivers.org/quality
======
jpatokal
Sigh. Another facile "ooh, different language/cultures are so very different"
story, coating a nugget of truth in a thick layer of bullshit. Having lived in
the US, Japan and Singapore, rest assured that in any of these, a washing
machine (or car or mobile phone or...) that falls apart in a week is
considered low quality, regardless of how new (Korea), shiny (Japan) or
expensive (China) it looks. Sure, each of those three cultures has those
preferences for appearance and you'll need to take that into account for
design and marketing, but _material_ quality (Jp. 品質 hinshitsu, Ch. 品质 pinzhi)
still means exactly that everywhere: how well it's built to spec, how long it
lasts, etc.

Also, I am completely not buying that story about somebody refusing a dented
shipping container _just_ because it's dented. Think about it for a second: if
somebody offered you a shipping container full of goods, and said giant metal
box looked like it had fallen from a crane, would _you_ buy it? Hell no, at
least not without inspecting every piece inside for damage and a hefty
discount for my troubles.

~~~
linux_devil
> "“This is why you can’t just take your brilliant American business idea and
> go make it happen in China, India, or Indonesia." I don't see much of
> difference in definition of quality when it is described as in "Japan" and
> "U.S" . I don't get this , what is difference between "it is perfect" and
> "it's well built and it will last".

I am not buying this piece either and because I am born and brought up in
India , I know better how quality is defined in India and it's different from
what author is trying to justify.

~~~
thaumasiotes
This thirdhand piece of information comes courtesy of something my mother read
in the autobiography (?) of a Japanese woman who came to the US some time in
the past.

Supposedly, in the course of cleaning her new home, she pulled the piano away
from the wall and was shocked to find that that part of it meant to sit flush
with the wall looked completely different (different wood, say) than the rest
of it. To her, the piano should be viewable from any angle and any direction,
no matter how it was intended to be installed in the home. To the American
manufacturer, the appearance of the piano was of course highly significant --
but only the appearance of the parts you could see.

~~~
jrs99
That's probably why Steve Jobs cared so much about how the inside of computers
looked. He was obsessed with it. He probably read some Japanese book when he
was in his youth and his culture became radically different in some way. Much
more Japanese.

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mynameishere
_What if I came to America and tried to start a company that helped people
stay at home and get drunk alone...blah blah blah_

Sivers responds: _Touché_

Touché? What if I came to America and tried to start a...liquor store? Where
you can buy a bottle of vodka at 90 percent off, compared to clubs? Totally
novel, right? Unthinkable.

Obviously, if the Singapore retail experience described in this article is
correct, any entrepreneur there is going to look for ways to change that.
Besides, a _huge_ amount of product from amazon is boring stuff like nappies
and soap and ground coffee. People don't buy those things during a social
event.

~~~
nl
_Touché? What if I came to America and tried to start a...liquor store? Where
you can buy a bottle of vodka at 90 percent off, compared to clubs? Totally
novel, right? Unthinkable._

Most people buy at liquor stores to take to a social event. That reinforces
the story's point, not contradicts it.

Liquor stores don't compete with clubs on price, they compete with each other
and other sources of take-away alcohol.

------
avighnay
However earnest, such efforts always end up being a narrow perspective which
when successful becomes even more dangerous as then the one persons stereotype
becomes an 'accepted fact' (case in point the Indian head nod references,
What!)

The only way to do this would be to avoid being your culture centric and
wherever you go start with respect for that culture and then open your eyes,
ears and mind as the first step

During business visits to Europe, I have had Indian colleagues who cringed up
their faces short of vomiting at the sight of a rare beef steak and have had
European colleagues come and track down that 'cow on the road photo shoot' as
their first biz agenda.

Now that is not the right start and it does not need a book to tell you that
you have to respect others way of life.

------
codemac
A long advertisement for a pile of books. Not to mention the article states
the obvious - different cultures are.. you know.. different.

Am I missing something? Was there anything more to this?

~~~
nl
I think you cynicism is unnecessary.

Knowing _different cultures are.. you know.. different_ is pretty pointless
without being able to point to specific examples of just how alien they can be
to one another.

I - for one - didn't know that quality in Korea meant "newness".

~~~
yongjik
> I - for one - didn't know that quality in Korea meant "newness".

Yeah, me neither, and I'm Korean.

* Well, it can be a sound advice to say "when you want to sell a product in Korea, emphasize it's new." But that's just plain old marketing strategy and sounds boring. (When selling books to English users, play on cultural relativism?)

~~~
jrs99
I also didn't know everyone in japan would think that perfection = quality.
That really is a revelation to me. And if you ask everyone in Korea, they'll
tell you new = quality. They are kind of related culturally, yet they are
radically different.

I actually asked a Korean man the same question maybe 20 years ago, and he
told me that he thought quality product meant "well crafted." Maybe because he
was americanized in some way by watching American movies, etc.?

~~~
thaumasiotes
Consider that I always buy laptops "refurbished". Dell's definition of a
refurbished laptop includes "someone else ordered this, and we built it, but
then they canceled the order and we never shipped it". The discount you get
for buying one of these, relative to a "new" (different how?) one, is
substantial.

> I actually asked a Korean man the same question maybe 20 years ago, and he
> told me that he thought quality product meant "well crafted." Maybe because
> he was americanized in some way by watching American movies, etc.?

Occam's razor would suggest that he said that because that's what "quality"
means, and the article was written by a blowhard.

------
bitwize
And if you ask a Six Sigma drone, even here in Murka, "quality" means little
variation from piece to piece.

"Quality" is one of those things like "value" that doesn't refer to a specific
thing, but must always be reckoned against human desires. Like, gold doesn't
have "intrinsic value". It has value to us because it's rare and shiny, and
humans like shiny things. And it's the same thing with quality: things are
quality because people like them and consider them useful, reliable, pretty,
or whatever. So this article boils down to a bunch of broad cultural
stereotypes (Koreans like new things, Japanese like refined things, etc.)
without much meaning.

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istorical
I'm working on something somewhat related:

[http://www.istorical.com](http://www.istorical.com)

It's user-contributed reports about what it's like to live in cities and
countries around the world. I'd love to hear some feedback if anyone else is
interested in this sort of thing!

~~~
dualogy
Love the idea and the site. Now to be notified of new posts? No FB Page.. no
Twitter.. doesn't even seem to have good ol' RSS feed (not that I'd really use
it, though I probably should switch back to that from that damned social
media).

Look I'm not going to set a reminder to regularly check back what new stories
you got -- do you really want only "once a year by chance" visitors? Get that
subscription funnel going. And yeah don't try to get membership signups for
just that one feature, not gonna happen. Might sign up and contribute even at
my own leisure at some distant future date, but right now --- offer some feed
or other to even keep us passive lurkers out there fed ;)

~~~
istorical
That's a great point. I had that on the to-do list but I haven't prioritized
it enough.

I'm still really, really bad at marketing. Do you know of any resources for
learning best practices as far as subscriptions?

~~~
dualogy
By subscription I meant anything feed-like I can subscribe to / "follow" ;)

I too am a loser at marketing :P

------
zachrose
It's particularly cool that "quality" is the word dissected in this article.

Robert Pirsig wrote a whole book[1] about Quality: specifically the unique
characteristic that it doesn't completely resides in an object itself, nor
does it reside completely within the subject experiencing the thing.

[1]
[http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060589469](http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0060589469)

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gumby
The "culture shock" series is pretty good too, aimed more at people who
actually move to the country.

The difficulties with books like this are 1> they age quickly 2> they are hard
to generalise (books of the same length for the Netherlands and India will
have wildly different levels of resolution) and of course the authors will be
different.

This wood egg approach seems like a reasonable way to deal with the latter.

I've lived in five countries the only general statement I can make is that
people are the same everywhere, and completely different as well.

------
jrs99
Article is VERY accurate. Japanese, especially, hate imperfection and believe
that everything should be perfect, without any asymmetry or irregularity.

~~~
vacri
A hardware company I used to work for had a sister company in Japan. We'd send
over our product and they'd run it through another set of production tests
before sending it on to customers. If something wasn't right, no matter how
trivial, they'd troubleshoot the issue (including pulling the thing apart)
leave big stickers pointing to the issue, and send it back with a report.

How trivial can they get? One item came back with 'dirt on screen', with an
arrow-sticker pointing at it. The tech here picked it up and touched the dirt
with his finger... and it fell off. Nothing else was wrong with the unit. For
this, the unit had a return-trip journey across an ocean...

~~~
jrs99
as a consumer, i would never return an item that was dirty. that's just too
extreme.

------
chime
How is Derek the co-author for all of those books? Is it like how celebs co-
author books or did he really write parts of each book?

~~~
justhw
From the about page:

> How these books were made I wrote 200 questions to be asked of each country.
> I hired multiple researchers in each country to answer each question. One
> local, one foreigner, one other. I wanted the book to be more than one
> person’s point of view. I hired a writer to turn the multiple different
> answers into one combined answer, and add another layer of expertise. I
> hired an editor to proofread and improve the final text.`

------
venus
On their face these WoodEgg books look very attractive. I having been toying
with the idea of setting up a company elsewhere than Australia, and would be
very interested in an in-depth survey.

Anyone who owns one care to share their thoughts?

~~~
hboon
I read the Singapore version out of curiosity because I stay here. Most of the
stuff can be researched online. But you'd probably have to spend much more
time doing that research and can't verify the results easily. And this is for
a city that already has quite a lot of information online. Worth purchasing, I
would say.

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hrktb
It's conflating language and expectations. Quality means the same in the US as
in EU or China or in Japan, we just don't expect the same level or properties
depending on the environment. Quality sushi in Japan is not the same level of
expectation as quality sushi in Brazil. A quality car in Sweden won't be
judged on the same criteria in Zimbabwe.

------
blackdogie
It does seem like a bit of an ad splash page.

But on the topic of different meanings, my favourite example is in Greek, you
as "Τι κάνετε" "What are you doing" literally but it translates as "How are
you?". These things go always translate directly, and if you are speaking with
a nonnative it's likely that these things will occur.

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grecy
Have people never left their own countries?

This is one of the first things you figure out when venturing abroad.

Nothing beats a summer day in thongs.

~~~
allochthon
Yes. I've lived abroad for years. Apart from local colloquialisms, English
words commonly used in the industry convey basically what one would think they
would convey. This blog post is exaggerating things a little to make a point.
The "thongs" play on words is a funny one, though.

------
zhte415
Quality is defined in the Service Level Agreement.

