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Small and medium‐sized firms (SMFs) can make valuable economic and social contributions through their distinctive capabilities for innovation. However, SMFs rarely possess adequate R&D resources and are therefore dependent upon external technological information. We believe that collaboration between higher education institutions (HEIs) and SMFs has considerable potential for strengthening innovatory activity in the UK. However, very little detailed information is available about the process of technology transfer from the perspectives of HEIs and SMFs. This paper examines ways in which HEIs establish links with SMFs as a means of commercializing their scientific and technological research. A questionnaire was used to obtain data from 37 HEIs on technological alliances with SMFs. In addition, a number of interviews were carried out with individuals responsible for marketing HEI science and technology.

Many studies have been carried out on how Information Technology (IT) has transformed ways of doing business, but little is known about IT in the retail food industry in Saudi Arabia. The study reported here is the first to shed light on the usage of IT in the Saudi supermarket industry and to report outcomes which will set the scene for further investigation. This study was conducted to investigate the use of IT in Saudi supermarkets, the barriers to usage and the benefits gained in their business. The methods selected for this study were personal interviews and questionnaires with the MIS managers of the 21 supermarkets listed in the 1995‐1996 Saudi Business trade directory published by Kompass.

This research identifies internet-based opportunities for developing competitive marketing advantages and provides recommendations for the use of the internet in sports marketing. A telephone-administered survey, constructed from an instrument developed by Sethi and King (1994), Caskey (1998) and salient literature, was employed. All 55 clubs participating in Australia's four largest professional sporting leagues formed the sample, with an 87% participation rate achieved. Results lead to several practical recommendations for professional sporting organisations seeking to improve their internet marketing opportunities.

The author aims to review the fundamental concept of quality function deployment and to discuss the facts that the road to success for new product development is the identification of customers' requirements and their conversion into engineering design requirements. Thereafter, the author seeks to present an in‐depth review of the subject and to study five new cases on the topic of quality function deployment.

The paper discusses the key elements of quality function deployment and the fact that the vision for the development of a comprehensive quality system can be built on the principles of quality function deployment taking customer requirements into consideration and relating them to design requirements.

To make the product development task successful and bring competitive advantages to the core business, management must be committed to the needs of customers through marketing surveys and implementing these in the process of product development by converting them into engineering design requirements.

This article reviews quality function deployment and its extensions such as fuzzy QFD, AHP and QFD, statistically extended QFD, dynamic QFD, and other extensions. In addition, cases covering the topics of a ship of quality, cost‐design parameter modeling, an enhanced version of quality function development, financial factors and uncertainties in the product design process with fuzzy formulation, and a model for prioritizing and designing rule changes for the game of soccer, are also reviewed.

The rapid changes in the environment have exerted significant pressures on healthcare providers to reassess their strategies. Furthermore, it is a paradox that the best clinicians are, themselves, not the best managers in running the healthcare services. Hence, a management model is set up using quality function deployment (QFD) where strategies are developed through a partnership between managers and clinicians for the provision of total quality healthcare in the light of dramatic changes in the health‐care environment. The QFD‐led model consists of seven parts, which includes service planning, operational planning and new concepts deployment. The power of the QFD‐led model comes from the detailed discussions with customers about their expectations, comparisons with competitors and considerations of how the healthcare provider can meet the customers’ expectations most effectively. The application of QFD in a restructured regional acute‐care hospital is discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodological framework that combines several data envelopment analysis (DEA) models to deal with the problem of evaluating and ranking advanced manufacturing technologies (AMTs) without introducing any subjectivity in the analysis.

The methodology follows a two-phase procedure. First, the relative efficiency of every technology is calculated by implementing different DEA cross-efficiency models generating the same number of high-order indicators as efficiency vectors. Second, high-order indicators are used as outputs in a SBM-DEA super-efficiency model to obtain a comprehensive DEA-like composite indicator.

The framework is implemented to evaluate a sample of flexible manufacturing systems. Comparing it to other methods, results show that the methodology provides reliable information for AMTs selection and effective support to management decision-making.

This paper contributes to the body of knowledge about the utilization of DEA to select AMTs. The framework has several advantages: a discriminating power higher than the basic DEA models; no subjective judgment relative to weights necessary to aggregate single indicators and choice of aggregation function; no need to perform any transformation normalizing original data; independence from the unit of measurement of the DEA-like composite indicator; and great flexibility and adaptability allowing the introduction of further variables in the analysis.

The paper aims to review the fundamental concept of quality function deployment (QFD) and discusses the fact that a road to success for a new product development is the identification of customers' requirements and their conversion into engineering design requirements. Thereafter, it seeks to review the subject and to study four new cases on the topic of QFD.

The paper discusses key elements of QFD and the fact that the vision for the development of a comprehensive quality system can be built upon the principles of QFD taking customer requirements into consideration and relating that to the design requirements.

To make product development task successful and bringing competitive advantages to the core business, management must be committed to the needs of the customers through marketing surveys and implementing that into the process of product development by converting them into engineering design requirements.

The method has been used successfully in practice in areas such as: facility locations, marketing strategies, robot selection, ERP selection, software development, and sports.

The paper reviews QFDs, and its extensions such as fuzzy QFD, analytic hierarchy process, analytic network process and QFD, statistically extended QFD, dynamic QFD, and other extensions of that. In addition to that, cases covering topics of: ship of quality, cost‐design parameter modeling, enhanced version of the quality function development, financial factors and uncertainties in the product design process with fuzzy formulation, and a model for prioritizing and designing rule changes for the game of soccer, are also reviewed.

The purpose of this paper is to develop and test a multi-level healthcare service quality (HSQ) model in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The research used a quantitative research method. Data were collected via a survey with questionnaire. The respondents are 154 patients of a healthcare institution in Jakarta, Indonesia.

The research result shows a multi-level HSQ model. The HSQ model consists of three primary dimensions, namely, healthcare service outcome, healthcare service interaction, and healthcare service environment. Healthcare service outcome has three subdimensions, i.e. waiting time, medicine, and effectiveness. Healthcare service interaction has three dimensions, namely, soft interaction, medical personnel expertise, and hard interaction. Healthcare service environment has two dimensions, which are equipment condition and ambient condition.

This research was only conducted in one healthcare institution in Jakarta, Indonesia. The data collection using convenience sampling method as well as the use of small sample size caused the limitation of the research results in representing across the customer of the healthcare institution. This study can be replicated with larger sample size and involving more healthcare institutions in order to examine the stability of the HSQ model.

Healthcare institution’s managers can use the HSQ model to monitor, measure, and improve their service quality.

There is a lack of research that develops and tests HSQ model based on multi-level approach in the context of developing country. This paper has fulfilled the gap.

The purpose of this paper is to synthesize existing quality-measurement models and applies them to healthcare by combining a Nordic service-quality with an American service performance model.

Results are based on a questionnaire survey of 1,298 respondents. Service quality dimensions were derived and related to satisfaction by employing a multinomial logistic model, which allows prediction and service improvement.

Qualitative and empirical evidence indicates that customer satisfaction and service quality are multi-dimensional constructs, whose quality components, together with convenience and cost, influence the customer's overall satisfaction.

The proposed model identifies important quality and satisfaction issues. It also enables transitions between different responses in different studies to be compared.