Cut Costs and Marketing Or Increase Product Quality and Marketing?

     So one of the things I have read some businesspeople say is that, in tough times, in order to attract and retain customers, one should not cut costs, which cuts product quality, nor cut marketing, which is one of the first things to get cut oftentimes. They say that if you focus solely on Revenue! Revenue! Revenue!, you'll hurt the company. Instead, you must ask yourself, "What can we do to make people willing to pay for the product?" They say marketing should not be cut, but instead perhaps even increased because it is vitally important for consumers to remain aware of your products/services, especially if other companies are cutting back on marketing. One point made is that this can endear consumers to your company for years, as they become aware of your company's products/services because of the increased marketing, and also very aware of the very good quality, especially in a time when quality from other companies was dropping.
     An example of the cutting on costs could be could be how a submarine sandwich chain might cut back on the amount of meat in the standwiches in order to save money. However, this then also makes the product quality decline. The alternative idea is to increase (or at least maintain) marketing and increase the product quality, or maintain the product quality, while offering some really premium products, and marketing them well to consumers. This may hit profits in the short-term, but longer-term, could increase them. So for example, increase the meat in the sandwiches, or maintain the level of meat in the regular offerings, and offer some really meaty premium offerings. People will pay a premium, but get really superior quality.
     This happened with Burger King in their experiment with offering expensive pork ribs in the middle of the recession. People bought them up so fast that Burger King began running out. What this showed is that, despite the recession, people are willing to pay a premium if the product has very good quality. How universal this is, I do not know however. A quick Google search for "increase marketing recession" yields a lot of results on this subject. I Googled "increase product quality recession" and "increase quality recession" but there does not seem to be as much on these.
     In addition to increasing marketing, one could also instead focus on finding ways to increase marketing effectiveness, as opposed to just blanket increasing the marketing budget. This can give the best of both worlds if done correctly I'd imagine (more effective marketing for the same price!).