"Look before you leap" is sound advice particularly if you are engaged in Business to Business transactions or if you are looking to purchase a fairly expensive product or pay for an equally expensive specialist service.

Shopping around for quality conscious Suppliers becomes even more critical if you also feel personally compelled to take into consideration all of the reasonably foreseeable knock-on effects of your purchase on human, social and/or natural environments.

As you may already be aware, Supplier organisations that share your perfectly reasonable consumer and environmental concerns can firmly distance themselves in the marketplace from their less quality-conscious competitors by adopting and complying with INDEPENDENTLY developed Standards, Codes of Conduct or other operationally relevant Guidance Specifications

You may also be aware that INDEPENDENTLY verified compliance with these invariably complex "Specifications" entitles successfully assessed Firms to display a "Quality Mark".

It's a managerially challenging, time-consuming and expensive process for Suppliers to legitimately secure the right to display one of these "Quality Assurance" Marks but, increasingly, Supplier organisations around the world are beginning to recognise that commonly held consumer concerns are best addressed and satisfied by opening themselves up to INDEPENDENTLY conducted and regularly updated assessments of their "Boardroom and Corporate integrity".

In practice, there is a substantial amount of consumer confusion about many of these Standards and their individually supportive Quality Marks.

Basically, Quality Marks can be divided into two broad categories, those that are generally regarded as operating in support of Governmental and other substantial Contract Awards (e.g ISO 9000 Certification Symbols) and those that support the less operationally demanding needs of "High Street" or other "domestic" trading environments like the AAQA COMPANY MEMBER Quality Mark.

By taking the time and effort to understand these Quality Marks and by "shopping around" for Quality Marked Suppliers the purchasing power of consumers could have a substantial impact on the profitability of less ethically motivated Suppliers.

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