Final answer:
Quality is often defined as meeting or exceeding customer expectations, which goes beyond just satisfying regulations or industry standards.
Step-by-step explanation:
Many organizations and quality experts define quality as meeting or exceeding customer expectations. This encompasses a focus on delivering products or services that satisfy the needs and desires of consumers.
Regulations, including licensing requirements and safety and environmental standards, play an important role in ensuring baseline qualities are met, but they alone do not define quality. Some regulations may act as informal trade barriers, and overly stringent standards run the risk of decreasing market accessibility.
Professional organizations, like the American Statistical Association, set expectations for researchers and hold them to high standards, as do laws in the federal code concerning research data. These sets of standards guide professionals toward maintaining integrity and quality in their work.
While meeting industry standards and working within budget constraints are important aspects, it's the customer's satisfaction that is most often the measure of quality for products and services.