Is quality management a competitive advantage? A study after the Spanish financial crisis in the furniture industry

The aim of this study is to test whether the use of non-financial quality performance indicators reduces bankruptcy probabilities. A questionnaire was sent to the population of small-and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the Spanish furniture industry. The final sample consists of 126 SMEs from the referred industry during the recent economic crisis (2007–2014), a period characterised by a huge increase in business competition and the rate of failure. The main argument is that, in this context, the competitive response of the furniture industry, especially in the case of SMEs, revolves around quality. A logistic multivariate regression model is estimated in which we include both financial and non-financial quality-implementation measures. We use a variable inspired by Perera et al.’s (1997) scale which integrates a variety of factors related to quality practices. The results show that the pre-emptive use of quality non-financial indicators is a key fact for subsequent business survival. These findings suggest important implications for external and internal stakeholders as well as policymakers.