A Strategic Analysis of Multi-Channel Expert Services

Akçura, Mevlüt; Özdemir, Zafer D.

doi:10.1080/07421222.2017.1297637

Cited by 23 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 42 publications

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“…Second, life and death matter [3]. Third, serious information asymmetry exists between physicians and patients [4]. The choice of an appropriate physician has always been the focus of research in the health care field.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Log-in Behaviors and Web Reviews on Patient Consultation in Online Health Communities: Longitudinal Study

Chen¹,

Jin²,

Zhang³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

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Background With the rapid development of information technology and web-based communities, a growing number of patients choose to consult physicians in online health communities (OHCs) for information and treatment. Although extant research has primarily discussed factors that influence the consulting choices of OHC patients, there is still a lack of research on the effects of log-in behaviors and web reviews on patient consultation. Objective This study aims to explore the impact of physicians’ log-in behavior and web reviews on patient consultation. Methods We conducted a longitudinal study to examine the effects of physicians’ log-in behaviors and web reviews on patient consultation by analyzing short-panel data from 911 physicians over five periods in a Chinese OHC. Results The results showed that the physician’s log-in behavior had a positive effect on patient consultation. The maximum number of days with no log-ins for a physician should be 20. The two web signals (log-in behavior and web reviews) had no complementary relationship. Moreover, the offline signal (ie, offline status) has different moderating effects on the two web signals, positively moderating the relationship between web reviews and patient consultation. Conclusions Our study contributes to the eHealth literature and advances the understanding of physicians’ web-based behaviors. This study also provides practical implications, showing that physicians’ log-in behavior alone can affect patient consultation rather than complementing web reviews.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effects of Log-in Behaviors and Web Reviews on Patient Consultation in Online Health Communities: Longitudinal Study

Chen¹,

Jin²,

Zhang³

et al. 2021

J Med Internet Res

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Hess et al compared customers' attributions after experiencing service failure and recovery and found a significant change [11]. However, services in an expert service market cannot be returned even though consumers encounter dissatisfying experiences [3]. Thus, service failure in an expert service field may cause considerably severe outcomes because consumers need to vent their negative feelings [21], such as the conflicts between the service providers and receivers [2].…”

Section: Service Failurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although patients lack professional knowledge and systematic medical training [30], several studies have underscored the information asymmetry between healthcare service providers and receivers [3,12]. Service providers may capitalize on this information asymmetry and conduct fraud to earn extra profit.…”

Section: Moderating Effect Of Recommendationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The long-existed information asymmetry between medical service providers and receivers has resulted in the latter's tendency to seek recommendations from family and friends or online word-of-mouth (WOM) on doctors to ensure the quality of physicians and avoid deceptions [3,4]. Given that interactions with friends and the crowd will influence patients' decisions because of social influence [5,6], we suspect that seeking recommendations before medical consultation may affect patients' feelings and perceived service satisfaction, particularly when facing service failure.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Service Failure and Consumers’ Satisfaction with the Healthcare Industry: Moderating Role of Recommendation

Wang

Liu

Gao

et al. 2020

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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This study explores the effects of service failure on different service attributes related to patients' satisfaction (i.e., therapeutic effect and service attitude). We consider patients' recommendation-seeking behavior, and examine the moderating effects of recommendation before medical consultation and its differences between the online and offline word-of-mouth (WOM) recommendations. We collected over 3,000,000 reviews from a leading Chinese online health community to facilitate the empirical analysis. We use two ordinal logit models as bases and, find that service failure exerts a negative effect on patients' both therapeutic effect satisfaction and service attitude satisfaction. Moreover, the effect of service failure will be attenuated if patients seek recommendations on doctors before consulting them. Moreover, the moderating effects of online WOM recommendations is demonstrated to be lower than those of the offline ones. Our findings provide important perspectives for the literature and managerial suggestions for stakeholders.

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“…Akcura et al examined the conditions under which a quality traditional expert will augment its offline channel by offering an online version of its services [10]. Akcura and Ozdemir investigate when and how expert service providers should offer their services online and what price strategy they should adopt [11]. Akcura and Ozdemir’s works are based on game theoretic models and a series of assumptions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Provision of Paid Web-Based Medical Consultation in China: Cross-Sectional Analysis of Data From a Medical Consultation Website

Li¹,

Yan²,

Song³

2019

J Med Internet Res

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BackgroundWeb-based medical consultation, which has been adopted by patients in many countries, requires a large number of doctors to provide services. However, no study has provided an overall picture of the doctors who provide online services.ObjectiveThis study sought to examine doctors’ participation in medical consultation practice in an online consultation platform. This paper aimed to address the following questions: (1) which doctors provide Web-based consultation services, (2) how many patients do the doctors get online, and (3) what price do they charge. We further explored the development of market segments in various departments and various provinces.MethodsThis study explored the dataset including all doctors providing consultation services in their spare time on a Chinese Web-based consultation platform. We also brought in statistics for doctors providing offline consultations in China. We made use of Bonferroni multiple comparison procedures and z test to compare doctors in each group.ResultsThere are 88,308 doctors providing Web-based consultation in their spare time on Haodf, accounting for 5.25% (88,308/1,680,062) of all doctors in China as of September 23, 2017. Of these online doctors, 49.9% (44,066/88,308) are high-quality doctors having a title of chief physician or associate chief physician, and 84.8% (74,899/88,308) come from the top, level 3, hospitals. Online doctors had an average workload of 0.38 patients per doctor per day, with an online and offline ratio of 1:14. The average price of online consultation is ¥32.3. The online ratios for the cancer, internal medicine, ophthalmology-otorhinolaryngology, psychiatry, gynecology-obstetrics-pediatrics, dermatology, surgery, and traditional Chinese medicine departments are 16.1% (2,983/18,481), 4.4% (16,231/372,974), 6.3% (8,389/132,725), 9.5% (1,600/16,801), 5.8% (12,955/225,128), 18.0% (3,334/18,481), 10.8% (24,030/223,448), and 3.8% (8,393/22,3448), respectively. Most provinces located in eastern China have more than 4000 doctors online. The online workloads for doctors from most provinces range from 0.3 to 0.4 patients per doctor per day. In most provinces, doctors’ charges range from ¥20 to ¥30.ConclusionsQuality doctors are more likely to provide Web-based consultation services, get more patients, and charge higher service fees in an online consultation platform. Policies and promotions could attract more doctors to provide Web-based consultation. The online submarket for the departments of dermatology, psychiatry, and gynecology-obstetrics-pediatrics developed better than other departments such as internal medicine and traditional Chinese medicine. The result could be a reference for policy making to improve the medical system both online and offline. As all the data used for analysis were from a single website, the data might be biased and might not be a representative national sample of China.

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A Strategic Analysis of Multi-Channel Expert Services

Cited by 23 publications

References 42 publications

The Effects of Log-in Behaviors and Web Reviews on Patient Consultation in Online Health Communities: Longitudinal Study

The Effects of Log-in Behaviors and Web Reviews on Patient Consultation in Online Health Communities: Longitudinal Study

Service Failure and Consumers’ Satisfaction with the Healthcare Industry: Moderating Role of Recommendation

Provision of Paid Web-Based Medical Consultation in China: Cross-Sectional Analysis of Data From a Medical Consultation Website

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