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. 2022 Oct 15;19(20):13293.
doi: 10.3390/ijerph192013293.

Internal or External Word-of-Mouth (WOM), Why Do Patients Choose Doctors on Online Medical Services (OMSs) Single Platform in China?

Jiang Shen  1 , Bang An  1 , Man Xu  2 , Dan Gan  3 , Ting Pan  1
Affiliations

Internal or External Word-of-Mouth (WOM), Why Do Patients Choose Doctors on Online Medical Services (OMSs) Single Platform in China?

Jiang Shen et al. Int J Environ Res Public Health. .

Abstract

(1) Background: Word-of-mouth (WOM) can influence patients' choice of doctors in online medical services (OMSs). Previous studies have explored the relationship between internal WOM in online healthcare communities (OHCs) and patients' choice of doctors. There is a lack of research on external WOM and position ranking in OMSs. (2) Methods: We develop an empirical model based on the data of 4435 doctors from a leading online healthcare community in China. We discuss the influence of internal and external WOM on patients' choice of doctors in OMSs, exploring the interaction between internal and external WOM and the moderation of doctor position ranking. (3) Results: Both internal and external WOM had a positive impact on patients' choice of doctors; there was a significant positive interaction between internal and third-party generated WOM, but the interaction between internal and relative-generated WOM, and the interaction between internal and doctor-generated WOM were both nonsignificant. The position ranking of doctors significantly enhanced the impact of internal WOM, whereas it weakened the impact of doctor recommendations on patients' choice of doctors. (4) The results emphasize the importance of the research on external WOM in OMSs, and suggest that the moderation of internal WOM may be related to the credibility and accessibility of external WOM, and the impact of doctor position ranking can be explained by information search costs.

Keywords: external word-of-mouth; online medical service; optimal sequential search; position ranking.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Research model of this study.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Doctor patient review section.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Selection reasons.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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