A Chinese case to satisfy the patient journey: optimal service configuration for online health service platforms

ABSTRACT

The utilization and development of online health service platforms have flourished in recent years. Unfortunately, the vast majority of those online health service start-ups surprisingly do not survive for a long time. For this reason, it is significant to investigate why some online medical service platforms have sustained, whereas others have not. Specifically, in this study we investigate the patient’s journey of undergoing the optimal service configuration of online health service platforms. With the single service level, we propose a frequency – rarity framework to analyze the importance of individual services, whereas at the multiple service level, we adopt the rule of service chain continuity to analyze the service configuration strategy. Further, a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis based on the 14 most influential online health service platforms in China confirms the proposed research hypotheses. We employ a special dataset (i.e. telecom system logs of 2,000 randomly selected 4 G Internet users) to assess and investigate the performance of the online health service platforms. The obtained results suggest the configurations that lead to high customer retention may require the presence of at least one of the high-frequency services (i.e. health information or e-consultation), whereas the configurations that lead to a high customer acquisition may require the presence of at least one of the high rarity services (i.e. e-consultation or online pre-registration). The continuity of the service chain has proved to be essential for both high customer retention and high customer acquisition. In addition, the basic services at the beginning of the service chain are deemed to be vital for high customer acquisition.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/15228053.2023.2298103.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [72271093].

Notes on contributors

Jia Li

Jia Li is a professor in School of Business, East China University of Sciences and Technology. His articles have appeared in International Journal of Electronic Commerce, Journal of American Society of Science and Technology, Information Technology & People, Journal of Global Information Management, Computers in Human Behavior, and Journal of Medical Internet Research among others. His research interests include electronic healthcare, electronic commerce, and data/text mining.

Ying Lu

Ying Lu is a postgraduate student in School of Business, East China University of Sciences and Technology. Her research interests focus on electronic healthcare and data/text mining.

Zeyu Peng

Zeyu Peng is an associate professor of information systems at East China University of Science and Technology. His research has appeared in many refereed academic journals, including Journal of Management Information Systems, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Information & Management, and Journal of the AIS among others. His research interests include technology diffusion and acceptance, information technology-enabled business performance, and e-commerce.

David C. Yen

David C. Yen is currently the Professor of Management of Information Systems at JHJ School of Business, Texas Southern University. Professor Yen is active in research and has published books and articles which have appeared in ACM Transaction of MIS, Decision Support Systems, Information & Management, IEEE Computer Society: IT Professionals, Information Sciences, Communications of the ACM, Decision Sciences, Government Information Quarterly, Information Society, Omega, International Journal of Organizational Computing and Electronic Commerce, and Communications of AIS among others. Professor Yen’s research interests include data communications, electronic/mobile commerce, database, and systems analysis and design.