Title: An investigation into the application of QFD in e-commerce

Authors: Alec Waterworth, Steve Eldridge

Addresses: 24 Pine Crescent, Stafford, ST17 0ND, UK. ' Manchester Business School, MBS East, The University of Manchester, Booth Street West, Manchester, M15 6PB, UK

Abstract: As the nature of business has changed over the last 50 years, with a shift away from manufacturing towards service sector industries, quality management has changed with it. Traditional quality management tools, such as quality function deployment (QFD), which were originally developed within manufacturing, have since become popular in assessing quality in the delivery of a service. Although recent research has highlighted the difference between physical service delivery and service delivery in e-commerce (Parasuraman et al., 2005; Barnes and Vigden, 2002, 2005), there is little documented evidence of these techniques being applied to e-commerce. This study has developed this research further, ultimately demonstrating how organisations can adapt traditional quality management tools to measure quality and guide improvement efforts in an e-commerce environment.

Keywords: quality function deployment; QFD; e-commerce; electronic commerce; e-quality; electronic quality; e-services; electronic services; customer satisfaction; eQual; house of quality; manufacturing industry; service industry; service delivery; improvement; productivity; quality management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPQM.2010.032067

International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management, 2010 Vol.5 No.3, pp.231 - 251

Published online: 08 Mar 2010 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article