부산대학교 도서관

BackgroundThe internet enables consumers to evaluate products before purchase based on feedback submitted by like-minded individuals. Displaying reviews allows customers to assess comparable experiences and encourages trust, increased sales, and brand positivity. Customers use reviews to inform decision making, whereas organizations use reviews to predict future sales. Prior studies have focused on manufactured products, with little attention being paid to health care services. In particular, whether patients prefer to use websites to discuss doctors’ reputation has so far remained unanswered. ObjectiveThis study aims to investigate how patient propensity to post treatment experiences changes based on doctors’ online reputation (medical quality and service attitude) in delivering outpatient care services. Further, this study examines the moderating effects of hospitals’ (organizational) online reputation and disease severity. MethodsFractional logistic regression was conducted on data collected from 7183 active doctors in a Chinese online health community to obtain empirical results. ResultsOur findings show that patients prefer to share treatment experiences for doctors who have a higher medical quality and service attitude (βservice attitude=.233; P