Examines how and why some major UK purchaser and supplier organizations have increasingly sought to become partners. Drawing on detailed case studies of Rank Xerox, Hoover, ICL and British Rail discusses the dynamics of partnership sourcing, and analyses and exemplifies the costs and benefits to...

Unlike other industrialised countries, the UK deferred the routine introduction of disease-modifying therapies (DMTs) for multiple sclerosis (MS) in favour of an experiment. Between 2002 and 2005, MS sufferers were identified, were offered DMTs only if deemed suitable by their physicians, and...

Health economists use “willingness-to-pay” to assess the prospective value of novel interventions. The technique remains controversial, not least with respect to the formats under which values are elicited. The paper analyses the results of a series of studies of the same intervention valued...

There is evidence that patient choice and the quality of service delivery in primary care can be influenced by the organisation and structure of provision at the local level. However, the formal measurement of structure in primary care has yet to be undertaken. Using data for Coventry, standard...

The development of an internal market in UK public sector health care has introduced hard budget constraints for those general practitioner purchasers who elect to hold their own budgets or 'funds'. Prescription medicines constitute an element of the fundholder's budget and a theoretical model...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to report the findings of a contingent valuation (CV) survey of health care services, designed to illuminate self-interest and benevolence on the part of one sex for the other. Design/methodology/approach In a constructed scenario, men and women recorded how...

Purpose – The objective of this paper is to examine the framing effects of discount presentation format in comparative price advertising in a low‐price and a high‐price product context. In particular, the authors study whether identical discounts presented in percentage and absolute terms...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a contextualized view of participants’ accounts of self-gift consumer behaviour (SGCB) throughout the consumption cycle, from the motivations to the emotions that follow. Design/methodology/approach – This paper uses an interpretive...