Actually, while quality was a major problem in the 70's, the real issue was something more critical...so the car comparison isn't really fair.
Japan was making cheaper, more fuel efficient cars. From 1972 on, the average consumer could pay very little for a car, let alone to maintain it. As a result, the cheap Japanese imports made up ground rapidly. Japanese quality wasn't that good, either (I know, I owned a '72 Corolla for 8 years...4 of them in the shop LOL), but I could go 2 1/2 times as far on a gallon of gas, and I only paid 1/2 what Detroit wanted.
Secondly, Japan followed an interesting marketing strategy (this I learned from being in the business) in the late '60's and early '70's. That is, they advertised on independent TV stations - which had younger audiences and cheaper ad rates. As a result, when people reached car buying age (myself included), the concept of buying a Japanese car wasn't a crazy idea. In fact, we had seen so many commercials, it made sense. Detroit advertised on independent TV, but not as heavily, since their money was wrapped up w/the broadcasters.
Whether you can make any correlations between that and Apple remains to be seen. But that is really what caused Detroit's problems. |
