Much of the early literature in the area of quality management literature is anecdotal, prescriptive, and methodologically suspect. As such, theory construction and rigorous empirical testing is a relatively recent development with the emphasis very much on quality practices. However, the various dimensions of quality performance and the relationship between them have received less attention from the research community. More specifically, the role of design quality has not been fully addressed in empirical studies. To address this gap we developed a path model incorporating quality practices, design quality, conformance quality, external quality‐in‐use, product cost, time‐to‐market, customer satisfaction and business performance. The model was tested with data collected from 200 suppliers in the electronics sector in the Republic of Ireland. Data analysis of the data indicated considerable support for the conceptual model.
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