Robin Hanson thinks deeply about it:
It seems to me that what people usually mean by a product’s “quality” is the overall value someone might gain from it, ignoring its price. Sometimes people talk about a product’s “value”, or it being a good “deal,” referring to its over all value including its price. And sometimes people will talk about quality given certain constraints. For example, folks might talk about a “great one bedroom apartment” suggesting that two bedroom place might be better, but that such comparisons are set aside for now. But the most common way to evaluate products is to just talk about value ignoring price. Yet why ignore price?
(Photo by Flickr user kafka4prez from the photo pool Fake Products: Mutant Knock-offs)
The Dish 