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One of the major goals of the recent NHS reforms has been to make the NHS more responsive to the needs of patients by offering more choice. DHAs and budget‐holding GP practices have been given an incentive to obtain better value for money in purchasing health care services. In doing so they will have to take account of the existing GP referral patterns for as “key advisers” GPs can have major influence on patients′ choice of hospitals and consultants. Until now not much has been known about the structure, development and change of referral patterns and the factors responsible for changes. A study concerning these issues, conducted in The Netherlands, provides relevant information for the British situation. The results (non‐specificity of referrals, the role of tradition and distance in building up referred relationships and patients′ influence on breaking up relationships) suggest that GPs′ decisions in building up and changing referral networks take place implicitly. Concludes that GPs need more information in order to choose the best option. Information exchange within GP practices or local/regional GP groups is a means of improving the basis for decision making. At the same time there is a growing need for research into cost/quality ratios of care offered by health care providers. In Britain, DHAs could play an important role in initiating and intensifying this research.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Sales management; Promotion; Product management; Marketing research/customer behavior; Sundry.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Product & Brand Management is split into six sections covering abstracts under the following headings: Marketing strategy; Customer service; Pricing; Promotion; Marketing research, customer behavior; Product management.

The introduction of regulated competition in health care in several Western countries confronts health care providing organizations with changing relationships, with their environment and a need for knowledge and skills to analyse and improve their market position. Marketing receives more and more attention, as recent developments in this field of study provide a specific perspective on the relationships between an organization and external and internal parties. In doing so, a basis is offered for network management. A problem is that the existing marketing literature is not entirely appropriate for the specific characteristics of health care. After a description of the developments in marketing and its most recent key concepts, the applicability of these concepts in health‐care organizations is discussed. States that for the health‐care sector, dominated by complex networks of interorganizational relationships, the strategic marketing vision on relationships can be very useful. At the same time however, the operationalization of these concepts requires special attention and a distinct role of the management of health‐care organizations, because of the characteristics of such organizations and the specific type of their service delivery.

This special “Anbar Abstracts” issue of the Journal of Management in Medicine is split into seven sections covering abstracts under the following headings: General Management; Personnel and Training; Quality in Health Care; Health Care Marketing; Financial Management; Information Technology; Leadership, management styles and decision making.

The aim of this study is to generate insights into whether market orientation – as defined by Kohli and Jaworski – is being practiced in the Ghanaian public sector.

Based on a case‐study of a local government, the Accra Metropolitan Assembly (the Assembly), semi‐structured interviews were conducted with departmental heads and their assistants to collect data. A total of 14 key informants participated in the interviews, and this sample size compared favourably with prior qualitative studies.

The assembly collects intelligence on citizens' present needs, their earning potential and the political and technological environment, ignoring citizens' satisfaction with development projects. Meetings are regularly held by the various units in the Assembly to share and discuss the generated intelligence, yet one can see little consideration of citizens' needs and their satisfaction with projects in these discussions.

Further research into local governments across multiple regions in Ghana, or from a range of countries within Sub‐Saharan Africa, could provide an opportunity for greater generalisability of the results.

Local authorities must develop formal procedures for monitoring citizens' satisfaction with services, programmes and development projects. There is need to harness the intelligence inherent among staff with the use of focused communication or knowledge management strategies.

Recent efforts to extend market orientation application to the public sector have over‐concentrated on western countries. Based upon empirical evidence from a non‐western (Ghanaian) context, this study further assuages fears that market orientation may not be applicable to public institutions like local government.

This article examines and comments on the role of clinical directors in the NHS (UK), with specific reference to the relevance of a strategic marketing emphasis. It utilises qualitative methodologies to collect data from stakeholders ‐ in particular, clinical directors and other managers ‐ from two NHS trust hospitals. It examines the extent to which a marketing approach is applicable to clinical managers working in these two hospitals. It utilises a conceptual framework devised by Kottler and Andreason, to highlight whether a marketing approach is, in fact, utilised by these managers. It suggests that a strategic marketing approach (based upon relationships), remains relevant to clinical management, notwithstanding recent changes in government policy.

Assessing air cargo strategy from an airport's perspective is relatively novel, and it seems little attention has been paid to this research area. This chapter will address this research gap by introducing an Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas, designed to help build cargo strategies for individual airports.

The Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas can be used as a tool to analyze and improve the air cargo strategy of an airport. The first part of this chapter will explain the different components of the Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas more in detail. The horizontal axis on the canvas differentiates between exogenous and endogenous drivers of airport competitiveness. The vertical axis distinguishes between the airport product and the airport market. The canvas also considers potential disruptors and principal shareholders' objectives. The different components of the canvas allow the analyst to dig into the main features and differentiators of respective airports. The canvas might also be helpful to structure and compare the strategic components and framework of their own or competitors' cargo strategies.

In the second part, the Airport Cargo Strategy Canvas was applied to Brussels Airport to analyze its cargo strategy. The canvas showed several strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats in its current cargo strategy. The completed canvas will let Brussels Airport's executives explore and analyze the strategy of their main competitors and peers' strategy and help them identify potential gaps in their strategies.

Children’s voices are seldom heard directly. Most often, children, particularly young children, are represented by adults acting on their behalf who may or may not best represent the child’s views or best interests. This can be beneficial or problematic, if the child’s needs are not appreciated or recognised. This chapter looks at the changing attitudes to listening to young people, and the growing recognition of the value of children’s needs, as well as the growing voices of the children themselves, who make their needs increasingly clear. The results of our Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) interviews with children and young people via the DIPEx International organisation give us clear direction as to the importance children using primary care services place on being taken seriously, being listened to and being able to make their own decisions. Other researchers asked input from primary care professionals on children’s autonomy and how the current and future primary care systems can best address the needs of young people, as well as the placing of these issues in a wider cultural context, and how this influences and is influenced by children’s choices. Finally, we look at how the MOCHA country agents have reported the assessment of the importance and function of listening to young people in our research.