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© SGS Société Générale de Surveillance SA.
© SGS Société Générale de Surveillance SA.
What happens when a company develops a great new high-tech product and wants to take it to market? Before selling can begin, it needs to undergo testing and certification. This process is known as product certification, and it is important for several good reasons.
Product certification is the process by which your product is tested to verify its conformance to standards in a specific market, industry or region. This may be a mandatory requirement due to a potential risk to the end-user, or a voluntary exercise which provides a unique selling point for the product.
Voluntary certification allows manufacturers to differentiate their products in competitive markets. Consumers are aware certified products are more reliable and cost-beneficial than cheaper, uncertified products. It can therefore be used as a marketing tool.
Product certification also confirms safety and reliability. No one wants to buy a product that is low quality or may expose its users to an unacceptable hazard. Certification can show your product has passed relevant safety tests as well as performance tests. Having a product tested for safety also reduces the risk of any legal action that may result from malfunction.
Finally, product certification matters because governments (easily the biggest buyer of materials and supplies) have procurement standards that they must enforce. Many governments will not allow companies to tender for contracts if they fail or refuse to certify their products.
In general, a product certification process can be broken down into the following stages:
Once the product satisfactorily passes these stages, the product may now bear the certification mark and the consumer now knows it has met the requirements of the relevant standards.
Product certification can be misconstrued as a complex and expensive process, but it is an important and significant step in the process of product development and production. It can be confused by the highly technical terms used but the important thing to note is the common objective of safety. Many of these markings demonstrate a product is safe (in a certain aspect) and also demonstrate compliance with recognized ethical requirements.
To stand out in the marketplace, a product does not just need to be useful, modern and practical, it also has to be reliable. Consumers’ buying decisions are guided by this rationale in almost every industry, which is why certification is such a fundamental aspect of product development, corporate responsibility and sustainable production and consumption.
Learn more about Product Conformity Assessment (PCA).
This article can also be found in our PCA Newsletter (Q4/2023) – which keeps you up to date with developments in technical barriers to trade and product conformity assessment.
You can read more articles in our previous editions in the PCA Newsletter Library.
