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Stresses the necessity of systematic design of services. Asserts that systematic design is a necessary pre‐requisite for service quality. Describes how the Nordic School of Services has found that service quality is key to competitiveness and profitability. Asserts that gradually service design stands out as the master key. Introduces the concepts of servuction quality and design quality ‐ the two sources of service quality. Discusses techniques for service design and the relationship between profits, costs and quality. Concludes by summarizing a service design strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to examine a comprehensive model explaining how web site design influences consumer's emotional and cognitive responses and contributes to satisfaction and word‐of‐mouth (WOM) communication in an online shopping context.

A total of 804 female college students completed an online survey after browsing one of two mock web sites developed to manipulate web site design quality.

Web site design quality showed positive direct effects on pleasure, arousal, and perceived information quality and indirect effects on satisfaction and WOM intention. Pleasant shopping experience increased positive perceptions and satisfaction. The results also showed that satisfaction mediated the relationship between emotional and cognitive responses and positive WOM intention.

Although an online survey was used to increase the reality of an online shopping experience, uncontrolled conditions may have influenced the results of the study. Further research needs to be conducted in a laboratory setting to control these factors.

The paper theoretically extends the applicability of the stimulus‐organism‐response paradigm to satisfaction and electronic WOM intention research and fills the gap in the current online shopping literature. The paper also offers valuable information to online retailers to maximize consumer satisfaction and generate positive WOM using web site design.

The purpose of this paper is to present an empirical study which examines the relationships among design-driven innovation, quality and customer value in manufacturing companies.

A research project was carried out in 193 Italian manufacturing companies, using the questionnaire method. An exploratory research study was conducted with hierarchical cluster analysis and regression analysis.

The analysis shows the existence of four clusters of manufacturing companies which differ by firm size, expenditure in innovation and type of innovation. Furthermore, the elements of a quality product and a design product have a significant impact on customer value, and the importance of these elements changes within the different cluster.

The small size of the sample and the geographic origin of companies imply limited generalizability and further research on the topic is recommended.

The study suggests that companies should simultaneously pursue quality and innovation to increase customer value. To achieve high levels of innovation, and thus increase their quality standards, manufacturing companies should consider the importance of the elements related to design which have impact on customer value.

Focusing on the relationship between design-driven innovation and quality which has not yet been investigated, the present study reveals many common elements of product design and quality product and their positive influence on the perception of customer value.

This research has been conducted to determine the design quality indicators and parameters for affordable housing in Karachi Pakistan. The absence of quality in Karachi housing resulted from various factors ranging from policy failure, violation of bylaws, population, housing scarcity and non availability of quality parameters etc. The amalgamation of these factors eventually lowers the quality of housing and ultimately results deficient housing design and construction. Because of this trend the end users experience the nuisance of unplanned maintenance and bear the tax of heavy repair and reworks. Significance of research has been accomplished through developing design quality models for both professional and users. This research has eventually evaluated forty eight (48) quality indicators for housing design (QIHD) from listed 65 design quality variables farmed in seven sections. This research concludes that existing design quality of affordable housing in Karachi could be enhanced through improving the design, construction, services, site development and neighborhood and sustainability. The QIHD model will provide the opportunity for design and construction professionals of city to rethink their housing design intellect in context of the housing quality.

Existing research on product design has found that a design’s complexity is an important antecedent of consumers’ aesthetic and behavioural responses. This paper aims to shed new light on the relationship between design complexity and perceptions of design quality by taking the effects of consumers’ naïve theories into account.

The hypotheses of this paper are tested in a series of three experiments.

The findings from three studies show that the extent to which consumers prefer more complex product designs to simpler ones depends on the extent to which they believe that the complexity of a design is indicative of the effort or of the talent of the designers involved in the design process. These competing naïve theories, in turn, are triggered by contextual information that consumers have at their disposal, such as the professional background of a designer or the brand that is associated with a particular design.

This research was limited to a design's complexity as the central design element and to the effects of two naïve theories. Future research may also take other design factors and consumer heuristics into account.

This research reveals that the extent to which managers may successfully introduce both complex and simple designs may depend on the reputation of a company’s designers and the prestige of a brand.

This research examines design complexity from a novel theoretical perspective and shows that the effect of design complexity on perceptions of design quality is contingent on two specific naïve theories of consumers.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between urban design quality and the real estate value of high street retail properties. Quantitative research on the added value of quality design has seen little advancement during the past two decades and hedonic analysis of the high street retail sector remains embryonic. This paper bridges this gap by providing empirical evidence on the added value of quality design.

The study uses a unique dataset of 301 Belfast City Centre retail transactions during the period 1994‐2009. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis is used to estimate a hedonic pricing model that utilises a composite range of variables. These variables were designed employing quantitative and qualitative approaches complementarily to strengthen the value of the empirical research.

The findings suggest that aspects of quality design such as connectivity, frontage continuity and variety, material quality and massing appropriateness add to real estate value. These findings supplement those on sector‐specific value determinants that emphasise the high impact of location, tenant characteristic and Zone‐A price calculations.

In analysing high street retail rent determinants this paper focuses on the impact of various aspects of quality design to inform investors and developers about those aspects that are highly valued by city centre retail tenants. Policy makers benefit from the findings through empirically justified built environment benchmarks for improving the quality of life in our cities.

This study provides a quantitative model for measuring urban design quality which uses data from a UK city but has a wider application range. It bridges a significant gap in the literature related to hedonic investigation of the added value of quality design by providing a holistic approach to quality.

In this paper, an attempt has been made to develop an integrated product development‐quality management (IPD‐QM) system by integrating the concepts of concurrent engineering (CE) and TQM. These two concepts have been considered in the past as a separate identity. However, there is a need to develop a system that would consider quality management and improvement at the design stage by incorporating the principles of total quality management (TQM) at every stage of the design and other upstream and downstream value adding activities. TQM has been considered with reference to firm orientation and identifies market advantages, that are product design efficiency, process efficiency and product reliability. The special feature of the system proposed here is that it advises designers, product developers and process planners on improvements that can be made to the design to improve product quality and manufacturing efficiency, and customer satisfaction. Also, a framework has been discussed in this paper for the integration of CE and TQM in manufacturing.

The objective of the research is to characterize various key factors affecting apparel design and product quality.

In the fulfillment of the objective, the Delphi method and a survey questionnaire were used to collect related materials. This was followed by descriptive statistics, reliability, and factor analysis in order to set up the “house of quality” using the method of quality function deployment.

The factors that were found to affect the quality of apparel design were fashion sensitivity, ability of material application, colour sensitivity, fashion trend, fashion market positioning, and management. Fashion style, cloth quality, cutting quality, discount, and personal favourites were the key factors affecting consumers when choosing apparel. Keen observation ability, marketing analysis, and market development were very important for designing and producing high value‐added products.

The survey was conducted in Taiwan, which perhaps limits the usefulness of the findings elsewhere.

The article may assist apparel designers to understand the requirements of consumers of fashion products.

Apparel design rules have been formulated in Taiwan using the method of quality function development to assist apparel designers to improve design quality and production performance.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the impact of urban design quality on the real estate value of commercial office property. Empirical evidence based on quantitative research into the added value of quality design on real estate performance has seen little advancement during the past two decades. Office sector hedonic analysis has been predominantly characterised by a piecemeal approach focusing on specific attributes and lacking a holistic approach to the effects of design quality on real estate value. This paper brings forward new empirical evidence to assess the added value of quality design based on quantitative analysis of office sector performance in the historic urban core of a UK city.

Using a unique dataset of 279 Belfast City Centre office properties rented during the period 1995‐2009, this study employs regression analysis to estimate a hedonic pricing model based on a composite range of variables. The contribution of this study is the complementary utilisation of quantitative and qualitative methods to generate variables incorporating a holistic approach to design quality at three different levels of investigation: interior; exterior/architectural; and urban scale.

The key findings show that higher design quality specifications in the three levels (interior, exterior and urban scale) can generate rent premiums. Aspects of quality design that include connectivity and building facade distinctiveness enhance corporate image; and material quality appropriateness adds to real estate value whereas the lack of preference for tall buildings and high‐end interior quality specifications in historic cores reflect market reactions to economic trends.

This paper provides investors and developers with insights about those aspects of quality design that are highly valued by office tenants in historic urban cores. This is especially significant in the downturn of the property cycle with investment priorities playing a crucial role in a project's economic viability.

This study bridges a significant gap in the literature concerning hedonic investigation of the added value of quality design on real estate performance. This holistic approach using quantitative and qualitative methods and incorporating urban design variables constitutes a unique approach to quantifying quality impacts on real estate value.

There is a growing understanding that the quality of a product should be built in at the design phase. More and more reports have shown that this kind of approach, named design for quality, can benefit the company to make it much more competitive. In many Eastern countries such as Japan and Taiwan, such concepts have been used for a while. The so‐called product oriented design (POD) and quality function deployment (QFD) are widely used in many industries. This may be one of the main reasons why many Eastern countries have had a very high economic growth rate during the past two decades. For a coastal nation, the shipbuilding industry is essential for defence purposes. However, to run a shipyard efficiently is not an easy job due to several of its characteristics. They are: (1) the product (a ship) size is very large both in volume and weight and each product has thousands of different components; (2) the design, planning and manufacturing process overlap very significantly and the concept of “teamwork” is therefore greatly emphasized; and (3) the production process is very complex and complicated with very many interdependences. With these characteristics, the methods of “design for quality” and “design for manufacture” seem to be ideal tools for the shipbuilding industry to maintain product quality while raising the shipyard′s efficiency. Describes how a shipbuilding company in Taiwan can apply these positive concepts to improve its performance. Discusses several practical examples to illustrate these concepts.