讲座题目：How DigitalWord-of-Mouth Affects Patient Decision Making: Evidence from DoctorAppointment Booking 

主讲人：高国栋教授，马里兰大学史密斯商学院 

时间： 2019年6月28日（周五）

地点：文科楼资料室1423A 10:00-11:00 

主持人：林旭东教授，3044am永利集团官网 

内容简介：

Thispaper presents the first study that utilizes detailed clickstream data ononline Word-of-Mouth to uncover mechanisms underlying its influence on consumerdecision making. We leverage a feature launch on a major doctor appointmentbooking platform to study the impacts of online WOM on three dimensions of aconsumer’s choice process: the consideration set size, the time taken toconsider alternatives (web session duration), and thegeographic dispersion among the choices considered. We further investigate theeffects of online WOM on demand. We have several novel findings. First, theimpacts of WOM on the decision-making processes are not monotonic, but ratherare contingent on the density of WOM (number of rated doctors) in a market.When the density of WOM is low, the availability of WOM makes patients considermore doctors, browse for a longer duration, and consider doctors that aregeographically more dispersed. In contrast, when the density of WOM is high,the availability of WOM makes patients consider fewer doctors, browse for ashorter duration, and focus on doctors that are geographically more proximate.Finally, our results show that the presence of WOM can have a cannibalizationeffect: when the ratings are published, the highly rated doctors reap thebenefits (in the form of increased demand) at the expense of unrated doctors.Our study contributes to extant literature on online WOM by providing newinsights through which WOM influences consumer decision making at a new levelof granularity.

主讲人简介：

Guodong(Gordon) Gao, Ph.D., M.B.A., is the director of the Health Insights AI Lab, theco-director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS),and associate professor at the Smith School of Business, University ofMaryland, College Park. He received his PhD from the University ofPennsylvania, his MBA from Tsinghua-MIT Sloan joint program, and bachelor’sdegrees from Tsinghua University. His research interests include Big Data andArtificial Intelligence in healthcare, health IT, and quality transparency. Dr.Gao initiated and co-organize the annual Conference on Health IT and Analytics(CHITA). His research has been funded by NSF and AHRQ. Dr. Gao is a recipientof the NSF CAREER Award.

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