An investigation into the application of QFD in e-commerce

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. Copyright © 2010 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.