Satisfying the patient journey: optimal service configuration for online health service platforms

Abstract

Abstract Using and developing online health service platforms are flourishing in recent years. Surprisingly enough and also unfortunately, the vast majority of those online health service startups don't survive for a long time. For this reason, it is significant to investigate why some of the online medical service platforms have sustained, while others haven’t. In specific, this study intends to investigate the optimal service configuration of online health service platforms from the perspective of patient’s journey. With the single service level, a frequency-rarity framework is proposed to analyze the importance of individual services, while at the multiple service level, the rule of service chain continuity is adopted to analyze the service configuration strategy. Further, an fsQCA analysis based on 14 most influential online health service platforms in China confirms the proposed research hypotheses. The obtained results suggest the configurations that lead to a high customer retention may require the presence of at least one of high frequency services (i.e., health information or e-consultation), while the configurations that lead to a high customer acquisition may require the presence of at least one of high rarity services (i.e., e-consultation or online pre-registration). The continuity of service chain is 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 is deemed to be vital for the high customer acquisition.