Digital healthcare retail: role of presence in creating patients' experience

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to empirically examine the impact of technology-enabled service co-creation on patients' service patronage behaviour in healthcare retailing. The first objective is to examine the mediating roles of spatial presence and co-presence in the relationship between technology enabled co-creation and service experience. The second objective is to investigate if healthcare service experience impacts patients' relationship value with hospitals and subsequent patronage intention.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from a sample of 516 customers of three leading hospitals in India during the social isolation period of COVID-19. The data were analysed using structural equation modelling.FindingsThe study results demonstrate that customers' favourably perceived technology-enabled co-creation generates feelings of spatial presence and co-presence in the technology-enabled platform. The feeling of presence enhances patients' health care service experiences which in turn predict their relationship value perceptions towards the healthcare service provider. Co-presence dominates as a mediator in terms of magnitude over spatial presence. The favourable value perception positively impacts patients' intention to come back to the same hospital.Research limitations/implicationsThe study uses cross-sectional data, which does not incorporate any temporal variations in the investigated relationships. The study does not account for differences in government vs. private undertakings of healthcare system.Practical implicationsThe findings envisage a digital healthcare retail system, where hospitals can enhance patients' perceptions of healthcare service experience, relational value and re-patronage intention, based on the digital mediated environment design elements, i.e. spatial presence and co-presence. As co-presence is a dominant factor, ensuring that human healthcare experts (rather than technology based e-service elements like chatbots) participate in healthcare service co-creation is of prime importance to provide enriching service experience to the patients.Originality/valueThe value of the research lies in extending the theories of presence, UTAUT and S-O-R to understand digital healthcare retailing, in order to identify the mechanism of how online co-creative platform can generate hospital patronage behaviour among patients through the serial mediation of presence, augmented service experience and relationship value.

Stimuli Influencing Engagement, Satisfaction, and Intention to Use Telemedicine Services: An Integrative Model

“…However, few studies applied the S-O-R framework to explain the context of telemedicine. For example, Sreejesh et al [ 37 ], in their online healthcare research, demonstrated the technology-enabled co-creation as an incentive option for the users of online medical care consultancy to express their feelings of co-presence, spatial presence, service experience, and positive value perception, which led to patients’ frequent usage behavior. In a similar domain, another study by Chang et al [ 38 ] argued that justice perceptions towards online doctor consultations boost the patients’ trust and satisfaction levels.…”

Using chatbots in e-retailing – how to mitigate perceived risk and enhance the flow experience

“…UTAUT has been widely employed as a theoretical lens to investigate users' intentions and behaviour (Tamilmani et al, 2021;Williams et al, 2015) toward numerous technologies, also in highly interactive scenarios (e.g., Vega et al, 2019), as are the ones involving chatbots. Mogaji et al (2021) found the UTAUT four constructs to explain the use of banking chatbots when conducting a bank transaction, in the same way, Sreejesh et al (2022) use them to enhance patients' experience when using hospital e-service facilitators like chatbots. Kuberkar and Singhal (2020) found the same constructs to influence public transportation chatbot's adoption intention.…”

The influence of price value on purchase intention among patients with chronic diseases in medical e-commerce during the COVID-19 pandemic in China

“…Liu et al ( 14 ) proposed an algorithm and used users' purchase data to develop users' diseases to provide product recommendations for pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms. Sreejesh et al ( 15 ) examined how the technology-enabled service co-creation affected patients' service purchase behavior in medical and health services retail. Zehnder et al ( 16 ) studied the growth of Swiss community pharmacies on the internet over the period 2000–2003, which showed that pharmacy-group portals were promoters of internet pharmacies.…”