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Are My Symptoms Serious Dr Google? A Resource-Based Typology of Value Co-Destruction in Online Self-Diagnosis
Abstract
Online self-diagnosis, where consumers engage with technology by applying their knowledge and skills to generate a medical diagnosis without the participation of a health care professional, is commonplace. Although co-creation of value for consumers and e-health service providers (i.e., suppliers of technological interfaces for consumers to self-diagnose) can occur via “do-it-yourself” diagnosis, we argue that it also has strong potential for value co-destruction. This is because of deficiencies in or misuse of resources (consumer or e-health provider). Based on a review of the service science, information systems and health care literatures, we develop a typology of value co-destruction in online self-diagnosis. It shows that online self-diagnosis can result in value co-destruction of consumers' service process and outcome when consumer resources are deficient or misused (e.g., knowledge) or when e-health provider resources are lacking (e.g., poor quality offerings). The value co-destruction perspective has not been examined previously in this context and is important because it can negatively affect consumers' well-being. A consumer and service focus is missing from research on online self-diagnosis, which our typology addresses. Implications of our typology for providing online health information and more specialised self-diagnosis services are discussed, drawing on a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder approach, along with future research opportunities.
... Fuelled by collaboration, the creation of societal value is based on the service users' increased ability to function effectively in the service system (e.g. Kim 2019) performing some tasks themselves (Robertson, Polonsky, and McQuilken 2014). The value cocreation chain can reach beyond the initial service encounter, for example, through service recommendations or the assistance of fellow service users (Tuan 2018). ...
... The value cocreation chain can reach beyond the initial service encounter, for example, through service recommendations or the assistance of fellow service users (Tuan 2018). Unsuccessful collaboration, in contrast, can similarly spur progressive value codestruction (Espersson and Westrup 2020; S. P. Osborne and Strokosch 2022;Robertson, Polonsky, and McQuilken 2014). ...
... As the amount of information available to service users increases, the balance of information changes (Kim 2018), challenging the requirements for added information (Lam and Bianchi 2019). Service users might need professional guidance on what information is reliable (Davey and Grönroos 2019;Robertson, Polonsky, and McQuilken 2014). With contradictory or incorrect information, a professional is required to take corrective measures (T-A. ...
Value co-creation is a process that aims to improve services by enlisting the cooperation of service users. We reviewed 65 scientific articles using the PRISMA protocol to reveal the distinct roles of public service professionals in value co-creation. We discover the differing values and tensions created by those roles as professionals balance individual and public interests. Our findings indicate that understanding the multiple roles of professionals helps to clarify their influence on value creation at various levels of the service ecosystem. The study also suggests a managerial implication in the form of the importance of identifying professional development and training.
... For example, Čaić et al. (2018) describe co-destruction as a process that destroys the emergence of potential value. Further, others describe value as consumers' health that can potentially be co-destroyed by online diagnoses (Robertson et al., 2014), unrealized positive outcomes of a collaboration (Uppström & Lönn, 2017), and missing out on potential experiential utility (Crowther & Donlan, 2011). Value co-destruction is also articulated via experiences. ...
... Shopping centers Robertson et al., 2014 E-health, do-it-yourself diagnosis Frow et al., 2016Healthcare Buhalis et al., 2020 Sharing Economy, AirBnB Engen et al., 2021 Public services (the Social Insurance Agency and the Tax Agency) Lumivalo et al., 2023 Service encounters Net benefits VCD is associated with net benefits (or losses). Here VCD is articulated in terms of tradeoffs and net benefits. ...
... Put differently, it is the possible existence of a favorable outcome that is being co-destroyed (cf. Čaić et al., 2018;Robertson et al., 2014). Indeed, one study even states that "value does not need to have been co-created before it can be destroyed. ...
The concept of value co-creation (VCC) is central to service-dominant logic (SDL) and forms its second axiom, namely that “Value is cocreated by multiple actors, always including the beneficiary” (Vargo & Lusch, 2016, p.8). In parallel with the evolution of VCC in SDL, the term “value co-destruction” (VCD) has also emerged within the services and marketing literature (Echeverri & Skålén, 2011; Plé & Cáceres, 2010). Value co-destruction is pitched as a reverse concept to VCC—another side of the same coin (Plé, 2017)—capturing how interactions, practices, and resource integrations between actors might have negative impacts on value formation. Research on VCD has both expanded and fragmented (Echeverri & Skålén, 2021), but the concept has not been subject to the same scrutiny as VCC. In this article, we question the logic underpinning VCD conceptualization and problematize its use. We articulate three specific problems: first, the need to view VCC as a normative statement; second, a logical flaw in how VCD captures negative outcomes; and third, an issue with the “co” in co-destruction. We offer two solutions for researchers in this area: first, given that VCC is representative of a metatheory, we present mid-range theories as providing opportunities for exploring the role of valence in interactive service experiences; second, we identify literature that presents a continuum of contrasting negative and positive value outcomes.
... Plé and Chumpitaz Cáceres define the concept of value codestruction "as an interactional process between service systems that results in a decline in at least one of the systems' well-being (which, given the nature of a service system, can be individual or organizational)" (2010, p.431). While various studies have supported the definition of value co-destruction as a distinct process leading to negative outcomes (e.g., Robertson, Polonsky, and Mcquilken 2014;Skålén, Pace, and Cova 2015;Smith 2013); in contrast, others have referred to value co-destruction as an outcome of such a service exchange process (Kashif and Zarkada 2015;Stieler, Weismann, and Germelmann 2014;Worthington and Durkin 2012). Further, diverging perspectives have emerged concerning the relation between the concept of value co-destruction and the S-D logic notion of value co-creation. ...
... Drawing from our conceptual review, value co-destruction can be described as an interactional process between involved actors (e.g., Castillo, Canhoto, and Said 2020;Plé and Chumpitaz Cáceres 2010;Smith 2013). As actors integrate resources either directly (e.g., person to person) or indirectly (e.g., via appliances or applications), the value co-destruction process may emerge from actor-actor interaction, such as the misuse of resources (Plé and Chumpitaz Cáceres 2010), conflictive or incongruent resource integration practices (Echeverri and Skålén 2011), or the loss of resources (e.g., Smith 2013) and lack of required resources (e.g., Robertson, Polonsky, and Mcquilken 2014). However, we argue that value codestruction for individual actors cannot be determined solely according to such actor-actor interactions, which can be observed, for instance, through resource integration practices (Carù and Cova 2015). ...
... The evident division between these two dimensions-actoractor interaction and individual actor-manifests in the literature as an inconsistency in the discourse on value co-destruction as a process (focusing on actor-actor interaction) and an outcome (focusing on individual actors' perceptions; for example, Robertson, Polonsky, and Mcquilken 2014;Stieler, Weismann, and Germelmann 2014). As actors' perceptions may evolve throughout the service encounter, we argue that both actor-actor interaction and individual actor dimensions should be observed in parallel to understand how value co-destruction unfolds. ...
The service-dominant (S-D) logic lens for understanding value co-creation and customers’ interactive roles in the service exchange has emerged as a focal theme of interest among service academics and practitioners. While recent investigations have also focused on the process of value co-destruction—that is, how potential negative outcomes occur—the concept and its distinction from value co-creation remain unclear. This conceptual review synthesizes the concept of value co-destruction and proposes a framework consisting of two interrelated dimensions—actor–actor interaction and individual actor —and their components at three temporal points of the service encounter. We distinguish value co-destruction from other closely related concepts and take steps to integrate the value co-destruction concept into the S-D logic framework and the concept of value co-creation. The proposed integrative framework can help researchers and service practitioners alike to identify, analyze, and rectify the value co-destruction components in the service exchange and, thereby, avoid potential negative outcomes of service interactions. A threefold research agenda is proposed to obtain a more balanced understanding of the two dynamically interrelated concepts of value co-creation and value co-destruction and their application in practice.
... For instance, Worthington and Durkin (2012) define value co-destruction as a process opposite to value cocreation. Likewise, Robertson et al. (2014) and Stieler et al. (2014) manifest value co-destruction as deficient or misused resources in online self-diagnosis and football, respectively. Tsiotsou (2016), with the lens of S-D logic and Consumer Culture Theory (CCT), brings the unique perspective of value co-construction and co-destruction of context, including historical meaning, tribal logic, rituals, and socialization processes. ...
... Likewise, while using the conceptual impression of customer misbehaviour, Kashif and Zarkada (2015) explore the value co-destruction causes in frontline employees working in the banking sector. Robertson et al. (2014) and Kim et al. (2020) explore the causes of value co-destruction in the sports industry while interviewing spectators while Prior and Marcos-Cuevas (2016), Jarvi et al. (2018), Corsaro (2019) used the context of firms and explore the manager's perspective on enlisting causes of value co-destruction. The most adopted practice is the manager's perceived understanding in identifying the manifestation of value codestruction as a leading antecedent. ...
... So far, this research area has been less explored (Calhau Codá & Silva Farias, 2021;Echeverri & Skålén, 2021). To date, the context of tourism (Järvi et al., 2020), sports (Robertson et al., 2014), banking (Kashif & Zarkada, 2015;Worthington & Durkin, 2012), and online communities (Jmour & Hmida, 2017;Lv et al., 2021) are explored, and most of the studies used critical incident technique as a methodology to explore the phenomenon. Most of the selected research articles exploring value co-destruction are qualitative studies; thus, another future research area is quantitative validation of proposed dimensions, frameworks, and models of value co-destruction. ...
The research frontier of Service-Dominant logic has elicited the etymological debate on the phenomenological nature of value. To date, the literature has shown a biased and myopic view of value co-creation as an outcome of service interaction. Leading journals have given prominent space to value co-creation. Still, value co-destruction is yet least explored though it is also a realistic view of a service interaction. Value co-creation manifests the wellness of actors, but not all service interactions result in positive outcomes causing value co-destruction. The researchers have started the debate on value co-destruction relating to its conceptual description; still, the literature is fragmented. This article is a systematic literature review that explores the epistemological, theoretical, and contextual understanding of value co-destruction to synthesize fragmented literature from 2010 to date. This article provides an overview of value co-destruction seminal work, theoretical underpinnings, leading antecedents, and coping strategies in particular contexts. The systematic selection of literature affirms value co-destruction as a decline in the wellbeing of actors during service exchange due to the misalignment of actors’ resources and a mirror image of value co-creation. This article offers co-existence, the role of context, contextual antecedents, the temporal nature of co-destruction, and exclusively the ISPAR model as theoretical support for value co-destruction as future research directions.
... Codestructive interactions usually take the form of negative word of mouth or complaints in C2B interactions, while sharing information about other companies' products or open criticism of other consumers result in co-destruction in C2C interactions. Robertson et al. (2014) investigated how online medical self-diagnosis has led to customers misdiagnosing themselves and adopting inapropriate treatments, which could sometimes be fatal. They outline a multi-pronged, multi-stakeholder perspective to minimise the occurrence of value co-destruction in online self diagnosis. ...
... The internet and related technologies facilitate co-creation and can facilitate interaction between firms and consumers. Robertson et al. (2014) showed how consumers turn to the Internet for information and how the original intention of co-created content resulted in co-destruction. Future research should be directed towards understanding specific areas with prevalent value co-destruction. ...
... Future research should be directed towards understanding specific areas with prevalent value co-destruction. These areas, such as within the healthcare industry as identified by (Robertson et al., 2014), should be studied to understand how they influence consumer decisions and the cost of these decisions to the firm needs to be identified. The destructive efforts of consumers in these communities could also be seen positively and more research should be done to see how the value destroying intentions of consumers could be used to create value for the firm. ...
Co-destruction of value has been highlighted as a possible outcome of every interaction between firms and consumers. Despite the likelihood of its occurrence, the concept is not adequately defined or understood, while little is known about how and where it occurs. This paper reviews the literature on co-destruction to provide insights into what co-destruction is, and it identifies where co-destruction occurs and how it occurs through resource mis-integration and in practice. The review takes a stakeholder approach, highlighting how value can be co-destroyed by stakeholders both within the dyad of the firm and its consumers and beyond this dyad during multiparty interactions and in virtual communities. The analysis suggests that value can only be co-destroyed when the expectations of the beneficiary are higher than the level of service offered by the provider. The paper proposes a new definition for co-destruction and highlights pressing research gaps within the co-destruction literature.
... In contrast, VCD might emerge if actors cannot access resources, hindered by an objective absence of resources or a lack of awareness. For example, the absence of information occurs when both parties cannot provide or process information (Robertson et al., 2014;Smith, 2013). This can happen because others are unwilling to provide reciprocal resources or do not have the required skills (operant resource) to be effective resource integrators (Farquhar & Robson, 2017). ...
... Resources in isolation do not have value unless they are integrated or applied through interactions (Robertson et al., 2014). Resourcing involves the operation of available resources to transform and reinforce them for mutual benefit based on shared meanings and purposes (Caridà et al., 2018). ...
... For example, Chang et al. (2017) described an electronic medical record-exchange system as a platform that combines multiple resources in medical settings, thus providing actors with more opportunities for VCC by increasing their ability to identify and exploit information from other actors. For example, e-health services can address the unaffordability and inaccessibility of health care and improve medical treatment and diagnosis but also patients' involvement in the service (Robertson et al., 2014). In another vein, technologies such as self-service (Du & Chou, 2020) and social media platforms offer actors accessibility to resources from other interacting actors. ...
The paper develops a conceptual framework to study the constructs of information technology (IT)-supported value co-creation and co-destruction through shared processes of social interaction and resource integration as mediated by IT and embedded in interactive value formation practices. In particular, the elements of social interaction and resource integration are identified, and the role of IT is discussed. We conduct a systematic literature review and analyze the data using the service system perspective. Our research contributes by identifying the constructs of value-creating phenomena enabled by IT from the service system perspective and presenting a research agenda for further studies.
... For example, more than 141 million visits to WebMD.com occur monthly (SimilarWeb, 2021), and Google receives over 70,000 health-related searches per minute (Murphy, 2019). Despite its promise for improving health outcomes, consumers' digital health information usage is not without controversy (Nunan & Di Domenico, 2019;Robertson et al., 2014). While many healthcare providers feel confident about internally created information, they often question the credibility of resources created and shared externally, leading to integration conflicts and consumer-physician information asymmetry (Anderson et al., 2016). ...
... Second, physicians have traditionally discouraged consumers from seeking out and sharing external health information due to credibility concerns (Kareklas et al., 2015). Dismissing consumer input from external sources may further discourage consumer value co-creation efforts (Robertson et al., 2014). Third, consumers may not be motivated to seek out and share information and instead wait for information from their physician, increasing asymmetry and decreasing consumers' co-creation efforts (Singh et al., 2004). ...
... Physicians may also exert positive influence through an explicit or implied endorsement of specific digital resources shared during physician-consumer interactions that complement physician-provided information relevant to a consumer's specific health decision context (Anderson et al., 2016;Baird & Nowak, 2014). Conversely, physicians may express credibility, quality, or usefulness concerns related to externally created information that will dampen consumers' value perceptions of digital inputs (Robertson et al., 2014). Finally, as consumers better understand information's credibility, it enhances the experienced relevance and usefulness of the inputs (Kareklas et al., 2015), thereby increasing their overall value perceptions for digital health information resources. ...
Digital platforms offer emerging opportunities for disseminating information to improve decision‐making, motivate behavior changes, and enhance outcomes. However, consumer‐physician asymmetry and traditional service delivery principles create resource utilization conflicts that may hinder health value co‐creation efforts. We address how expert service contexts with high levels of information asymmetry may maximize value co‐creation by encouraging consumers’ digital information usage to close the consumer‐physician information gap. Structural equation modeling of rural consumer surveys demonstrates the ancillary value created by supporting consumers’ digital resource integration. The results identify how physicians may increase rural consumers’ co‐creation of health outcomes by helping consumers utilize digital information to facilitate their activation in value co‐creation. However, physicians and consumers first need to share value perceptions of the digital inputs to maximize consumers’ resource integration and co‐creation efforts. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.
... However, a failed interaction prevents customers from obtaining these benefits. For instance, late or no responses (Robertson et al., 2014), disputes between members (Pinnington & Scanlon, 2009), and misinformation (Ja¨rvi et al., 2018) derived from interactions undermine customers' perceived usefulness, which are common in brand communities. ...
... Studies have demonstrated that a decrease in the perceived usefulness of online communities may result in negative consequences from its members, such as poor brand impression (Smith, 2013), dissatisfaction with the community (Yi & Baumgartner, 2004), and negative word-of-mouth (Lv et al., 2021). Robertson et al. (2014) found that when customers fail to receive effective solutions from an online community, they are likely to switch to other communities for help. Similarly, scholars in the fields of marketing and organizational behaviors have widely suggested that perceived fairness can have a significant and positive impact on individual citizenship behaviors (Guan et al., 2022;Skarlicki & Latham, 1996), whereas damage to perceived fairness may have deleterious consequences on community members. ...
With the advent of online communities, firms have invested heavily in creating their brand communities as a value co-creation platform to engage with their customers. However, customer interactions in online brand communities may not always be beneficial for firms. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, we explore how interaction failure as a manifestation of value co-destruction leads to negative customer outcomes in online brand communities. The results of an offline scenario-based experiment and an online survey suggest that interaction failure causes negative customer behaviors through two resource-based mediators: perceived usefulness and perceived fairness. Furthermore, we find that different types of interaction failures lead to different degrees of value co-destruction. Specifically, firm-oriented interaction failure leads to more negative customer behaviors than customer-oriented and peer-oriented interaction failures. Our study provides both theoretical and practical implications for value co-creation in online brand communities.
... However, the awareness of adolescents to seek and access excessive information about mental health problems without adequate assistance also raises new problems that can pose a risk to adolescent health, one of which is the emergence of the phenomenon of self-diagnosis, namely an individual's behavior that tries to diagnose himself by identifying the symptoms he is experiencing and comparing them with information found through the internet or similar sources (Goyder et al., 2009;Lanseng & Andreassen, 2007;White & Horvitz, 2009). This has the potential to cause misdiagnosis and inappropriate treatment for individuals (Ahmed & Samuel, 2017;Robertson et al., 2014). This behavior is characterized by the activity of seeking help secretly and surreptitiously on online mental health media pages without directly consulting a professional psychologist/psychiatrist, withdrawing from social interactions, seeking validation and support from peers regarding their condition based on information obtained from the internet, and share emotional experiences through social media. ...
... Additionally, in the context of students in Indonesia, the practice of self-diagnosis has an impact on the emergence of feelings of depression, stress, and excessive anxiety. From the data analysis conducted by researchers, the results of this study complement and enrich previous research (Ahmed & Samuel, 2017;Normansyah, 2021;Nugroho et al., 2022;Pratama, 2021;Robertson et al., 2014;Sadida, 2021) where researchers confirm that the phenomenon of self-diagnosis can very well occur among early adolescents (junior high school students), especially in the Indonesian context. Even children who are in elementary school can also experience it due to easy access to information on the internet without assistance from teachers and parents. ...
Recently, self-diagnosis or diagnosing personal conditions without expert judgment (psychologists and psychiatrists) by matching one's condition with information obtained from the internet (YouTube, TikTok, and websites) tended to be inaccurate and harmed adolescents with symptoms, especially among college students. However, it did not rule out the possibility of self-diagnosis related to mental health also being carried out by teenage students who were attending school. Using a qualitative phenomenological approach, this study focused 1) describes in detail the phenomenon of self-diagnosis in junior high school adolescents, 2) describe the causal factors and adverse impacts on junior high school adolescents when carrying out self-diagnosis and 3) explaining the implications and strategies for handling adolescent self-diagnosis for related parties (parents, homeroom teachers, counselors, and schools). This research also confirmed the researcher's initial suspicion that self-diagnosis could also occur among early adolescents and even 5th-grade elementary school students, not only among college students as in previous research in Indonesia. So that the phenomenon of adolescent self-diagnosis should not be underestimated, furthermore this finding needs to be followed up by related parties through synergy activities, mental health outreach with psychologists, and organizing parenting with parents.
... Equity is enhanced by reducing disparities in care between higher income and underserved populations [19]. Equity, thus, involves ensuring that underserved populations benefit, as much as possible, from the same treatments as higher income patients, while minimizing any additional harms faced by underserved patients [20,44]. Agency and autonomy indicate the ability of patients to make decisions that are consistent with their own health values and goals, while remaining free of undue influence or coercion [19]. ...
... Internet search engines and even medical information sites are not suited for reliably assessing patients' actual knowledge of their condition, or for providing patients themselves with accurate metrics about how well-informed they are. This may lead patients to become overconfident in their perceived knowledge and more disposed toward self-diagnosis [43,44]. ...
This paper considers the ethical risks and opportunities presented by generalist medical artificial intelligence (GMAI), a kind of dynamic, multimodal AI proposed by Moor et al. (2023) for use in health care. The research objective is to apply widely accepted principles of biomedical ethics to analyze the possible consequences of GMAI, while emphasizing the distinctions between GMAI and current-generation, task-specific medical AI. The principles of autonomy and health equity in particular provide useful guidance for the ethical risks and opportunities of novel AI systems in health care. The ethics of two applications of GMAI are examined: enabling decision aids that inform and educate patients about certain treatments and conditions, and expanding AI-driven diagnosis and treatment recommendation. Emphasis is placed on the potential of GMAI to improve shared decision-making between patients and providers, which supports patient autonomy. Another focus is on health equity, or the reduction of health and access disparities facing underserved populations. Although GMAI presents opportunities to improve patient autonomy, health literacy, and health equity, premature or inadequately regulated adoption of GMAI has the potential to compromise both health equity and patient autonomy. On the other hand, there are significant risks to health equity and autonomy that may arise from not adopting GMAI that has been thoroughly validated and tested. A careful balancing of these risks and benefits will be required to secure the best ethical outcome, if GMAI is ever employed at scale.
... Self-diagnosis is a long-standing problem, but it is becoming increasingly familiar with increasing public access to information via the internet and mobile phone technology. Online self-diagnosis also refers to those who make their medical diagnosis using their knowledge and skills without specialists in medical care, especially mental health (Robertson, Polonsky and McQuilken, 2014). One of the main reasons for not seeking mental healthcare is the social stigma towards mental illness and society's negative attitude towards mental illness and people with mental illness (Lee, 2018). ...
... Practitioners, for example, analyze an individual's background to understand behaviors that may result from a psychiatric diagnosis. Practitioners are trained to judge whether a set of symptoms a person displays satisfies the criteria for a specific disorder (Roberts, 2018). ...
Background: Mental health is increasingly being recognized as a severe problem. While there has been an increasing awareness of mental health and psychological well-being for economic and social development over the past two decades, there has not been a corresponding increase in mental health investment. Social media platforms allow healthcare practitioners to take full advantage of the potential of social media. However, this good thing is followed by a bad thing, where more and more information is accessible; people use that information to benchmark that they also have a "mental disorder" while not consulting a professional (psychologist/psychiatrist). Incidents like this are commonly referred to as self-diagnosis. Method: Therefore, this study will discuss the existence of information and promotion through accurate and explicit content related to self-diagnosis, using qualitative research with a case study approach. Results: The results obtained are that this accessibility allows the public to seek information about the symptoms they are experiencing, thereby facilitating early detection of mental health disorders. The power of social media to engage audiences to improve communication and expand the capacity to promote programs, products, and services should be valued in health promotion. Conclusion: Social media platforms, regardless of time or location, allow practically infinite opportunities to interact and communicate with others. This ease of use of on-demand communication may be critical in increasing social connection among people suffering from mental illnesses who have difficulty interacting in person.
... If one party lacks necessary resources, such as time, skills and knowledge; or takes a negative attitude in the interaction process, value co-creation may fail, resulting in the reduction of the well-being of one or more parties (Grönroos & Voima, 2013). For example, in online medical services, patients who use online self-diagnosis sites may not be able to clearly describe their symptoms because they lack sufficient medical knowledge, and electronic medical service providers may be unable to provide users with complete and easy-to-understand information due to a lack of resources (Robertson et al., 2014). Online diagnosis results are not accurate, resulting in a negative impact on the welfare of patients. ...
... Online diagnosis results are not accurate, resulting in a negative impact on the welfare of patients. That is, both parties of the online service jointly destroy the value that should have been generated in the interaction (Robertson et al., 2014). Given this phenomenon, the academic field began to study value co-destruction (e.g. ...
This paper develops a value co-destruction behavior (VCDB) scale in the business-to-customer (B2C) service context. It uses a multi-method and multistage design, which is consistent with the method of developing and validating psychometric scales. That is, in the first stage, we focus on the development of measurement items designed to reflect the conceptual attributes of VCDB. The second stage determines whether the measurement items are established as an indicator of VCDB and whether their reliability values are acceptable. The third stage tests to what extent the measured items represent the structure of VCDBs and their reliability and convergent and discriminant validity. Finally, the nomological validity of the VCDB scale is tested. Through qualitative induction and three quantitative studies, this study constructed a multidimensional VCDB scale, composed of bad employee resource integration behavior, bad customer resource integration behavior, bad employee interpersonal interaction behavior and bad customer interpersonal interaction behavior.
... To balance this overly positive narrative, the literature recognizing and addressing the negative aspects is growing. Several terms have been used for this, including the 'destruction of value' (Robertson et al., 2014) or 'disvalue' (Cluley et al., 2021). Similarly, to Hartley et al. (2019, p. 276) public value 'can be lost and displaced as well as created'. ...
... Relationship benefits to staff may also be lost because misuse of resources by providers, for example by changing staff for each appointment, that complicates the relationship-building process with the provider. Value destruction may occur both in terms of process (unsatisfying interaction), as well as outcome (inadequate outcomes, such as health or well-being) (Robertson et al., 2014). ...
IMPACT
The traditional public service ethos needs to be challenged by including citizens/users in developing and improving public services. However, the often one-sided positive accounts of co-production, co-design and co-innovation risk public managers and policy-makers involving citizens/users when it may be inappropriate and/or cause more harm than good. This article explains these ‘co-concepts’ and suggests how managers and policy-makers should balance the positive with potential negative (disvalue) aspects to enable a more useful practice of citizen/user involvement.
... As a result, value can be destroyed or diminished, leading to decreased well-being for at least one of the parties involved [20,32]. Value destruction can occur unintentionally if parties attempt to co-produce without having sufficient ability, for instance when technology is difficult to use [33,34] or does not function properly [35,36]. Further, value destruction may arise from intentional misuse of resources such as underuse or overuse of the services provided [37]. ...
... Other important preconditions to consider are that the technology must be functioning, and that the patients must be able to use the telemonitoring application. If these conditions are not at hand, this can result in destruction of value [34,35] as well as decreased patient engagement [33], constituting a critical threat to patient safety, which could impede future co-production. ...
Background
The number of patients with one or more chronic conditions is increasing globally. One strategy to achieve more sustainable care for these patients is by implementing use of home-based eHealth applications. Such services support patients to take on a more active role as value-creating co-producers of their own care, in collaboration with health care professionals. Health care professionals have a key role in the value creation process, but little is known about value formation within eHealth interactions, especially from their perspective. Therefore, this study aimed to provide a deeper understanding of how an eHealth application can function as a value-creating resource from the perspective of health care professionals.
Methods
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirteen health care professionals (nurses, physicians and first-line managers). Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze the interviews.
Results
The findings indicate that value formation processes are strongly influenced by the organizational preconditions and by the usability and functionality of technology. The experiences of the health care professionals indicated that value was conceptualized in dimensions of meaningfulness, building of relationships, building safety and feelings of trust. Although these dimensions were mainly expressed in a positive way, such as perceived improvement of medical care, accessibility and continuity, they also had a negative side that caused value destruction. This was primarily due to patient difficulties in using the application or making measurements. Subsequent efforts at value recovery resulted in value creation, but were often time-consuming for the professionals.
Conclusions
This study contributes by extending conceptualizations of value to the role of health care professionals and by highlighting technology as sometimes facilitating and sometimes hampering value formation processes. The findings indicate that the eHealth application was a value-creating resource, facilitating proactive communication and supporting patients’ engagement and control over their self-care. However, for the application to become a more valuable resource in practice and counteract inequity in care, it needs to be further developed to be adapted to the needs and preconditions of patients.
... Gr€ onroos, 2011;Smith, 2013;Zhu and Zolkiewski, 2015) or both (e.g. Cova et al., 2015;Leo and Zainuddin, 2017;Makkonen et al., 2018;Robertson et al., 2014). The scope of value co-destruction treated in the reviewed literature affects all three levels: ...
... A central finding in this study is the distinction between accidental or intentional value co-destruction. The reviewed Scimago literature also analyses accidental or intentional value co-destruction (Findsrud et al., 2018;Kashif and Zarkada, 2015;Robertson et al., 2014). For example, the misuse or non-integration of resources can either be accidental or intentional (Pl e, 2016). ...
Purpose:
Value co-destruction has received little attention in an event-related context. This appears surprising, given that the interactions among actors at an event may also reduce the value for other participants, stakeholders and that of the entire event or the event’s service ecosystem. This paper first aims to conceptualise value co-destruction and to provide an overview of related research in an event context. Second, a future research agenda for value co-destruction processes in an event context is developed.
Design/Methodology/approach:
Journals of the “Scimago Journal & Country Rank” were systematically reviewed for the keywords “value co-destruction”, “value destruction” and “negative value co-creation”. A second literature review specifically aimed at the events context extended the search scope to non-Scimago journals, Google Scholar and Google Web using the same keywords. All identified articles were qualitatively analysed concerning (1) the conceptualisation of value co-destruction; and (2) reasons for value co-destruction.
Findings:
The review of previous research highlights a limited scope of analysis, a focus on value co-destruction as an outcome, and on interactions at the meso-level. Based on these findings, a holistic definition of value co-destruction is proposed. The paper identifies three major directions for future studies on value co-destruction at events and suggests specific examples.
Originality: The paper contributes to a more holistic understanding of value co-creation and co-destruction in an event setting. For example, a clearer understanding of the interactions that reduce the overall value of an event may assist to better design valuable events in the future.
Keywords:
Value Co-Creation, Value Co-Destruction, Service Dominant Logic, Value Formation, Negative Value Co-Creation, Event Management
Paper-type: Conceptual
... Although value co-creation has been studied in such contexts as online communities (Chen, Drennan, Andrews, Hollebeek, 2018), customer loyalty (Chen, Wang, 2016;Van Oerle, Lievens, Mahr, 2018) shopping behaviour (Liu, Luo, 2019), studies on value co-destruction are rare and they focus on marketing communication e.g. writing online reviews (Zhang, Lu, Torres, Chen, 2018), (mis)use of resources (Robertson, Polonsky, McQuilken, 2014) and brand experience (Quach, Thaichon, 2017). ...
... Interestingly, value codestruction seems to occur most often in the product area and communication. It refers mostly to the misuse of resources (Robertson, et al., 2014), such as damaging the product due to improper use and not reading the description prior to placing an order. Such behaviour seems to result from a certain passivity in consumers' approach to online experiences when they decide not to perform an activity (e.g. ...
Research background: The paper focuses on value co-creation and co-destruction during online consumption. The current understanding of the concept of value is based on the premise that value emerges from interactions leading to exchange among multiple actors, including customers and companies. This implies the active role of all participants and leads to diversified outcomes, both positive (value co-creation) and negative (value co-destruction). The phenomenon of value co-destruction is studied in the context of online consumption, which is particularly suitable as it allows for consumer proactivity and participation in the process of exchange.
Purpose: The first purpose of the study is the conceptualization and operationalization of value co-creation and co-destruction. The second aim is to estimate the frequency of activities that can be conceptualized as various dimensions of online value co-creation/co-destruction.
Research methodology: The empirical part presents the results of an exploratory study based on a survey (PAPI) conducted on a sample of 212 university students.
Results: The main findings suggest that although young people regularly practice online consumption, they tend to behave in a rather passive manner and their value co-creation/co-destruction behaviours are limited to mostly price and promotion related activities.
Novelty: Value co-destruction is a recent and understudied phenomenon. This paper proposes a conceptualization and operationalization of a value co-destruction concept.
... Although only a small fraction of occupational therapists have been found guilty of ethical misconduct the influence of the media (internet, social, talk shows and printed) and electronic advances (connectivity to information via cell phones and tablets), along with on-line diagnosis and therapy 11 , cannot be negated as clients may have better access to resources of varying authority and reliability, possibly giving them more confidence to question the practices of their service providers. Occupational therapists need to appropriately inform clients with relevant and reliable information whilst respecting their clients' opinions in an ethical manner. ...
In South Africa, the health care professions are regulated by statutory bodies which are organs of the state and can enforce laws such as the Health Professions Act. The Health Professions Act provides the parameters within which the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) can sanction members if they are in contravention of its regulations. During the period under analysis i.e. between 2007 and 2013, only three penalties were imposed against two occupational therapy practitioners. Although the number of penalties can be viewed as insignificant the value of the research is in the fact that cognisance needs to be taken by the profession of the relevant ethical issues in these cases.It is recommended that occupational therapists should always inform their clients appropriately and should also form informal mentoring groups.
... They used websites such as Google and WebMD. Another study found that three out of four Australians admit to searching the internet to diagnose medical symptoms and six out of ten who go online for health information do so for the purpose of self-diagnosis (Robertson et al., 2014). These statistics show how prevalent self-diagnosis is on the internet and raises the question of whether diagnoses using sites such as WebMD are even reliable in the first place? ...
... framework. SDL provides a deeper understanding of value generation within companies, emphasizing customer perceptions of service value (Robertson et al., 2014). This approach facilitates analysis of value exchange processes, including services, costs, and information among participants in value creation (Vargo & Lusch, 2011). ...
... It can also prevent physicians from giving accurate diagnoses in the medical attention they need because it is especially arduous for healthcare professionals to present conflicting opinions about the information found online (Farnood et al., 2020). Even more dangerous is the possibility of self-diagnosed patients influencing medical professionals in their diagnosis by detailing their medical issues in a manner that only fits the medical problems that they believe they have experienced (Robertson et al., 2014). Furthermore, it has also been found that cyberchondria-induced self-diagnosis is more prevalent among teenagers (Liu et al., 2022), which heightens the urgency to deepen the understanding regarding children's development in the age of free information. ...
Purpose of the study: This research aimed to fill gap by detailing the arguments around legal responsibility of juvenile narcotics use that are not intended for recreational purposes, but rather for medical purposes. This seeks to contribute to the growing literature on restorative justice in Indonesia, particularly for the development of the juvenile justice system. Methodology: This study examined the phenomenon of narcotics uses in the self-medication context, particularly among youth, utilizing the normative legal research method and bolstered by a case study (Judicial Decision). It also utilized the statutory approach, which involved an in-depth analysis of applicable legal provisions regarding juvenile crimes and narcotics. Results: While conceptual analysis found that there are many connections between the emerging trend of self-diagnosis and self-medication with narcotics use among children, yet the normative support to deal with this phenomenon through restorative justice remains poor. The impact of the lack of normative support is shown in the judicial decision, in which restorative justice through the application of diversion was applied incautiously, blurring children’s well-being; disturbed by medical issue at first and later worsened by marijuana addiction. Applications of this study: The study can be an instrumental reference in guiding legal reforms, shaping healthcare policies for juvenile narcotic use, and providing information on educational and awareness programs that distinguish between medical and non-medical use of narcotics by minors. Novelty/Originality of this study: The originality of this study lies in its specific accent on the intersection of juvenile law, narcotics use, and medical treatment, which is a relatively underexplored area in legal research in Indonesia. It is also found in its analysis of a decision of a juvenile court regarding the use and possession of narcotics. Keywords: Legal Responsibility, Medical Purposes, Narcotics Crime, Restorative Justice, Case Study ABSTRAK Tujuan: Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengisi kesenjangan dengan menjelaskan argumen seputar tanggung jawab hukum penggunaan narkotika oleh anak di bawah umur yang tidak dimaksudkan untuk tujuan rekreasi, melainkan untuk tujuan medis. Penelitian ini juga dilakukan untuk berkontribusi terhadap berkembangnya literatur mengenai keadilan restoratif di Indonesia, khususnya untuk pengembangan sistem peradilan anak. Metodologi: Studi ini mengkaji fenomena penggunaan narkotika dalam konteks swamedikasi, terutama di kalangan anak-anak, dengan menggunakan metode penelitian hukum normatif yang didukung oleh studi kasus (Putusan Pengadilan). Studi ini juga menggunakan pendekatan undang-undang, yang melibatkan analisis mendalam terhadap ketentuan hukum yang ada mengenai tindak pidana remaja dan narkotika. Temuan: Analisis konseptual menunjukkan bahwa meskipun terdapat banyak keterkaitan antara tren berkembangnya swadiagnosis dan swamedikasi dengan penggunaan narkotika di kalangan anak-anak, dukungan normatif untuk mengatasi fenomena ini melalui keadilan restoratif masih kurang. Dampak dari kurangnya dukungan normatif ini terlihat dalam putusan pengadilan di mana keadilan restoratif melalui penerapan diversi diterapkan dengan tergesa-gesa, tanpa fokus pada kesejahteraan anak, yang awalnya terganggu oleh masalah medisnya dan kemudian memburuk akibat kecanduan ganja. Kegunaan: Studi ini dapat menjadi referensi penting dalam reformasi hukum, membentuk kebijakan kesehatan yang berkaitan dengan penggunaan narkotika pada anak, dan menginformasikan program pendidikan dan kesadaran yang membedakan antara penggunaan narkotika untuk tujuan medis dan non-medis oleh anak di bawah umur. Kebaruan/Orisinalitas: Orisinalitas penelitian ini terletak pada fokus spesifiknya pada titik temu antara hukum peradilan anak, penggunaan narkotika, dan perawatan medis, yang merupakan area yang kurang dieksplorasi dalam penelitian IndonesiaIndonesia. Orisinalitas juga terletak pada analisisnya terhadap putusan pengadilan anak mengenai penggunaan dan kepemilikan narkotika. Kata Kunci: Tanggung Jawab Hukum, Tujuan Medis, Kejahatan Narkotika, Keadilan Restoratif, Studi Kasus
... Lastly, as many rely on the information found online, and more and more of the general public are turning to the internet seeking health information due to its fast, convenient, and immediate delivery of information (Sun, Yu, Chiu, & Hsu, 2022); however, as some of these people who access some of this health information online commit to a self-diagnosis, a process in which they themselves engage with their found knowledge applying it those to themselves, which in process they generate medical diagnoses without a participation of a Healthcare Professional (Robertson, Polonsky, & McQuilken, 2014). ...
In this day and age, a lot of information can now be accessed through a wide variety of social media; ranging from videos, text, or posts from "accredited" doctors online. However, contrary to that, the question is to what extent would this accessibility be helpful and would this publicated knowledge about health preached by "legitimate" doctors be helpful at all? In this review, the term Health Related Videos was used to include the factors that lead to use of such information and its implications or influence to the behavior of such usage of information gathered by the general public through its means. This analysis yielded 42 articles and studies scattered across the aforementioned search engines.The purpose of this study is to investigate and reveal the extent in which consuming health related videos affects the behavior of those in exposure to such health information found online. Search engines such as Google Scholar, Science Direct, and E-Journals were browsed to provide a wide variety of literature that discusses the factors in which includes the main interest of this analysis. Overall, factors such as the need for information, access for information, professional gain, as well as profit from publishing health related content online, combating misinformation, guiding the public, and providing knowledge and making it more accessible is seen through the commonality across thematics that are found across the 42 articles and studies.
... A strong relationship cemented by the whole production chain brings both individual and collective benefits to all those involved in value co-creation, which makes the partnership attractive and beneficial for all parties (Ateş et al. 2015). Robertson et al. (2014) state that value creation occurs when a few factors are identified in integration systems, such as customer satisfaction, allocation of corporate resources in a given initiative, and an optimal alignment of service providers so that all parties can play their role in collaboration, therefore benefits are reaped by everyone. ...
Purpose: This study aims to list the managerial implications arisen from an interaction between a brewery and a Brazilian government agency grounded in the Lean principles of value co-creation through a case study.Design/Methodology/Approach: Empirical data on the actors were collected through questionnaires with managers and documents shared as they were being filled out. Their content analysis was carried out according to Bardin (2011).Originality: This is the very first study carried out to evaluate the benefits reaped from an interaction between a brewery and a Brazilian government agency grounded in the Lean principles of value co-creation.Results: Managerial implications involved in value co-creation are elucidated in respect of agro-industrial services provided by the brewery and a Brazilian government agency. Thus, Integration Strategy, Protection mechanisms and Growth opportunity constitute key elements in networking orchestration while providing agro-industrial services.Theoretical and methodological contributions: The factors affecting information and knowledge were shared between partners for improving the brewery production chain. The concept of value co-creation allowed overcoming issues of innovation and providing the actors with better services.Management contributions: Once having identified the three basic elements of a successful cooperation, as well as managerial implications concerning the actors involved, this study assists managers and researchers in developing strategies to overcome the obstacles faced in the provision of agro-industrial services based on the Lean principles of value co-creation. Furthermore, supporting factors in making decisions towards value co-creation are exposed so as to stimulate innovation via value co-creation and network orchestration.
... Todas estas acciones repetitivas están afectando nuestra salud de muchas maneras, y por consecuencia nuestras "inteligencias naturales" que no pueden ser utilizadas con altos grados como es normal para el cansancio y la ansiedad creados, y con el paso del tiempo presentan alteración en su salud mental y general [19] Cibercondríaco "Cibercondríaco" es una persona que busca compulsivamente en Internet información sobre síntomas particulares reales o imaginarios de la enfermedad. El aumento por el fenómeno de autodiagnóstico en línea haciendo investigación es aún más común que todo el mundo es consciente, porque consultar por Internet con sus síntomas personales de salud tiene un mayor riesgo para su salud porque los síntomas simples podrían convertirse en una situación real que amenaza la vida por los medicamentos para auto recetados, o su mente puede aumentar el riesgo de ansiedad basado en autodiagnósticos en línea olvidando que muchos síntomas son muy comunes para una gran diversidad de enfermedades y enfermedades y sin profesionales Diagnóstico basado en pruebas de laboratorio e imágenes biomédicas analizadas por expertos y correlacionadas por el historial médico personal por profesionales de la salud [20] Compra-compra compulsiva y/o consumo de adicción a la marca La "compra-compra compulsiva (oniomanía)" se caracteriza por una obsesión por el comportamiento de compra y compra que causa consecuencias adversas. La compra compulsiva tiene impactos negativos, los avances tecnológicos actuales han cambiado el panorama de la compra compulsiva. ...
La necesidad olvidada de reconocer nuestra "verdadera identidad" bajo el umbral ambiental, la sociedad y las raíces culturales, que naturalmente sirven como base del desarrollo de nuestra "cognición natural", "memoria", "aprendizaje" y "pensamiento" que ha sido alterado por el uso excesivo engañoso de la "Inteligencia Artificial" para generar tecnologías más fascinantes y útiles, pero muchas veces desafortunadamente se utilizan para manipularnos con fines comerciales, poder económico, político y otros temas. Estos hechos nos están llevando a la necesidad de encontrarnos a nosotros mismos para encontrar "el equilibrio saludable entre la inteligencia natural y la Inteligencia Artificial"
... All these repetitive actions are affecting our health in many ways, and by consequences our "natural intelligences" that cannot be used with high degrees as normal for the tiredness and anxiety created, and with the time pass they present alteration in their mental and general health [19] Cyberchondriac "Cyberchondriac" is a person who compulsively searches the internet for information about particular real or imagined symptoms of illness. The increased by the online self-diagnosis phenomenon doing research is even more common that everybody is aware, because consulting internet with your personal health symptoms has higher risk for your health because simple symptoms could evolve into life threatening real situation by auto medications, or your mind can increased the risk for anxiety based on online self-diagnostics forgetting that many symptoms are very common for a big diversity of illness and diseases and without professional diagnostic based on lab test and, biomedical images analyzed by experts and correlated by personal medical history by healthcare professional [20] Compulsive buying-shopping and/or brand addiction consumption "Compulsive buying-shopping (oniomania)" is characterized by an obsession with shopping and buying behavior that causes adverse consequences. compulsive buying has negative impacts, today's technological advances have changed the landscape of compulsive buying. ...
The forgotten need to recognize our "true identity" under the environmental-threshold, society, and cultural roots, that naturally serve as basis of the development of our "natural cognition", "memory", "learning" and "thinking" that has been altered by the misleading overuse of "Artificial Intelligence" to generate more fascinating and useful technologies, but many times are unfortunately used to manipulate us for commercial, economic, political power and other issues. These facts are taking us to the need to find ourselves to find "the healthy balance between the natural intelligence and the Artificial Intelligence"
... VCD is 'an interaction between service systems that results in a decline in at least one of the systems' well-being' (Plé & Chumpitaz Cáceres, 2010, p. 431) and, from the service-dominant logic perspective, it can be regarded as service process failure. Studies on VCD have focused on various areas included business-to-customer (Echeverri & Skålén, 2011;Greer, 2015;Kashif & Zarkada, 2015;Smith, 2013), business-to-business (Mills & Razmdoost, 2016;Prior & Marcos-Cuevas, 2016;Vafeas et al., 2016), public services (Järvi et al., 2018), service robots (Čaić et al., 2018), customer-to-customer (Kim et al., 2020), self-services (Robertson et al., 2014), and social media (Dolan et al., 2019). Many of these studies conducted qualitative approach using a small sample size to debate on VCD situations and to identify their antecedents. ...
This study aims to identify the types of value co-destruction (VCD) emerging in healthcare services that cause patients to reduce or extinguish their intentions to continue using the services; it also aims to identify the VCD antecedents. Complaints from 1075 dental clinic patients, which are collected as textual data, are analysed in this study. The authors adopt an exploratory approach comprising a quantitative analysis based mainly on the topic model, a type of machine learning, and a qualitative analysis based on the KJ method. Twelve types of VCD were empirically identified, three of which had a significant negative effect on the intention to continue using the service. Ten antecedents that cause these types of VCD were identified, when examined based on a multi-level perspective, institutional factors and social norms were found to be related to the VCD process. This study contributes to understanding the mechanisms by which failures in healthcare services occur and to developing effective decision making to overcome them.
... A patient's lack of knowledge and poor information provided by a website are the two factors that can ORIGINAL ARTICLE turn the internet into a destructive tool for the patient. 11 In practice it is very hard to stop people from uploading untrustworthy information. What we can do is educate the populace on how to use the internet to their benefit: what websites they can trust, what information they can rely on, and for what issues they need to consult a doctor. ...
Objective: To assess the prevalence of internet use for medical purposes by the general public and to correlate it with anxiety levels. Materials and methods: An analytical cross-sectional study was conducted in tertiary care hospitals of Rawalpindi from August to December 2020. Ethical approval was taken. A sample size of 385 was calculated through Rao software. Non-probability convenient sampling technique was used. Informed consent was taken. A validated questionnaire was used. The data was analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics Version 25. Frequencies and percentages were calculated. Chi-square test of significance was applied. P-value less than .05 was considered as statistically significant. Results: A majority of the participants used the internet to obtain health-related information. Majority of the subjects stated that the health-related searches exacerbated their anxiety. The negative effects of excessive or inappropriate internet use are stronger in women than in men. Participants from lower income groups were more prone to anxiety, however participants from higher income groups were slightly more likely to visit a doctor for a perceived health condition. The internet was helpful in understanding the terminology used by doctors for majority of the participants. Conclusion: The study found that most people who use the internet also use it for health related searches. There is a positive correlation between excessive health-related internet use and health anxiety. This correlation is stronger in women. Looking up medical terminology on the internet makes it easier for patients to communicate with doctors and understand their condition. Keywords: Anxiety, web searches, internet, cyberchondria
... Relating this thought (of creating value for other actors in the network) in healthcare, it is observed that healthcare actors (doctor, patient, paramedical staff, information and communications technology team, back-office personnel) create value for each other using both operant and operand resources (Hau, 2019). Although, earlier SDL studies focus more on operant resources (customer knowledge, skills, compliance, psychological states) contrary to operand resources (technology) in healthcare VCC (Robertson, Polonsky, & McQuilken, 2014). Considering this opportunity, the current study focuses on the possible role of AI (an emerging technology) in healthcare VCC (rooted in service-dominant healthcare interactions). ...
Ultraviolet (UV) sterilization technology is widely used to reduce microorganisms that may remain on the surfaces after a standard cleaning to the minimum number. In this chapter we have proposed a robot named for disinfection, which consists of the UV light and hence the robot is a disinfection robot. It can be deployed at a variety of locations, especially due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our UV bot has six 15 W of UV lamps mounted on top of the UV bot platform covering 360 degrees. Our UV bot employs an embedded system based on a Raspberry Pi to aid in navigation and obstacle avoidance.
... Koopman et al. [16] explored patient readiness to engage in health information technology, identifying individual patient's preferred mode of interaction as a key criteria. Despite individual patient preferences in communication modes, the use of internet self diagnosis has been noted as a source of conflict between patients and medical professionals, by reducing satisfaction with medical professionals when they are later consulted [21,26,30]. The main reasons for conflict being due to patients' inability to manage internet sourced information and its potential inaccuracy [30]. ...
Online health communities provide a knowledge exchange platform for a wide range of diseases and health conditions. Informational and emotional support helps forum participants orient around health issues beyond in-person doctor visits. So far, little is known about the relation between the level of participation and participants' contributions in online health communities. To gain insights on the issue, we analyzed 456 posts in 56 threads from the Dermatology sub-forum of an online health community. While low participation threads (short threads) revolved around solving an individual's health issue through diagnosis suggestions and medical advice, participants in high participation threads (long threads) built collective knowledge and a sense of community, typically discussing chronic and rare conditions that medical professionals were unfamiliar with or could not treat effectively. Our results suggest that in short threads an individual's health issue is addressed, while in long threads, sub-communities about specific rare and chronic diseases emerge. This has implications for the user interface design of health forums, which could be developed to better support community building elements, even in short threads.
... Relating this thought (of creating value for other actors in the network) in healthcare, it is observed that healthcare actors (doctor, patient, paramedical staff, information and communications technology team, back-office personnel) create value for each other using both operant and operand resources (Hau, 2019). Although, earlier SDL studies focus more on operant resources (customer knowledge, skills, compliance, psychological states) contrary to operand resources (technology) in healthcare VCC (Robertson, Polonsky, & McQuilken, 2014). Considering this opportunity, the current study focuses on the possible role of AI (an emerging technology) in healthcare VCC (rooted in service-dominant healthcare interactions). ...
Several uncertainties have emerged during the pandemic COVID-19, which has led to unprecedented turbulence in healthcare services worldwide. One of the most practical responses to this situation is to create technology-enabled mechanisms of value co-creation by which the service provider (i.e., doctors, hospitals, testing labs, etc.) and the consumer (i.e., patients), along with other actors of the healthcare ecosystem collectively co-create actual well-being. This work critically elaborates upon the role of ' Artificial Intelligence (AI)' in combating the uncertainties and challenges posed by COVID-19 in healthcare value co-creation. We explore the interdisciplinary domains of knowledge from the literature of services marketing, healthcare & technology and discuss the advantages of AI-empowered interactions in facilitating healthcare value co-creation during the pandemic. Additionally, we also highlight the spill-over (primarily negative) effects of AI on healthcare value co-creation, especially on the patients in developing economies.
Contents (Inside chapter)
1. Introduction
2. Service -Dominant Logic in Marketing
3. Service Interactions and Co-created Wellbeing
3. Uncertainty due to Pandemic
4. Uncertainty in Healthcare
4.1 Impact on pandemic led uncertainty on a patient’s mind
4.2 Impact on pandemic led uncertainty on service interactions
5. The Emerging Role of AI
6. AI combating Uncertainty and Supporting Value Co-creation in Healthcare
7. The Spill-over effect of AI
8. Conclusion and Future Work
9. References
... Another well-studied sector is health care. Robertson et al. (2014) explore causes of the breach of well-being through online self-diagnosis for the customer. Osei-Frimpong et al. (2015) investigated the VCC processes in the patient-doctor dyad and how their experiences in the care room affect the value created. ...
This paper proposes to verify, in the current literature on VCD, which dimensions/variables have often been studied in empirical efforts. The analysis was based in two stages. In the first, the general characteristics of the articles were identified. In the second stage, which dimensions or variables of VCD have been frequently studied were identified. As a result of this systematic review, new research possibilities were identified to explore VCD study.
... However, they might also negatively influence users. For example, the user might be misled by not receiving a correct recommendation with regards to the severity of a condition, potentially resulting in preventable harm, or with regards to the healthcare resource most appropriate for managing this condition [21]. ...
Many people visit an emergency department immediately after experiencing some unusual symptoms, without any regard to the scale of acuity of their condition. Some of these visits are unnecessary and lead to overcrowded emergency departments, increased wait times, and overutilization of scarce healthcare resources. At the other end of the spectrum, there are people who do not seek medical advice when they should. One solution to these problems is to provide a reliable source of information that would allow people to assess their need for consulting (self-triage) in a way that helps reduce the number of inappropriate visits and that promotes seeking medical help when necessary. This paper aims to identify requirements that make such self-triage applications usable. To this end, after assessing existing apps, we studied a new self-triage mobile application called Symptoms Pal, co-developed with Montfort Hospital in Ottawa, Canada. This application guides a user through a series of questions and, at the end, provides advice about the possible problem and course of action (911, visit an emergency department, visit a doctor, or self-care). The usability of Symptoms Pal was evaluated by a study involving 34 participants. Several strengths and weaknesses of the usability and perceived usefulness of the application were identified and led to additional requirements and a revised version. This research contributes 25 reusable requirements and validated user interface design artefacts for self-triage mobile applications that can be used by developers of similar applications.
... Baker, Gentry and Rittenburg (2005) base their definition of intention to use slimming products on the individual psychosocial characteristics and physical elements (physical appearance concern, body dissatisfaction) that motivated women to engage in unhealthy practices. Women who engage in unhealthy practices are vulnerable (Gurrieri, Previte and Brace-Govan, 2012) because they often self-diagnose, and often choose inappropriate slimming products because they are susceptible to unethical sales tactics (Robertson, Polonsky and McQuilken 2014;. Even when they perceive the risks and inefficacy, some women ignore the facts because be slim and beautiful is very important for them (Yager and O'Dea, 2010;Netemeyer, Burton and Liechtenstein, 1995). ...
Purpose: The present study investigates the role of body dissatisfaction in mediating the relationship between physical appearance concern and the use of slimming products. Design/methodology/approach: It employs a mediation model built using the PLS-SEM technique among a sample of 835 adult women. Findings: The results show body dissatisfaction partially mediates the effect of physical appearance concern on the intention to use slimming products. The results demonstrate that physical appearance concern increases body dissatisfaction in women, as well as reinforcing the relationship between those factors and the increased intention to use slimming products. Originality/value: The study extends the knowledge on the topic, explaining the antecedents, and the mediator of the intention to use slimming products.
... Grönroos, 2011;Smith, 2013;Zhu & Zolkiewski, 2015) or both (e.g. Cova et al., 2015;Leo & Zainuddin, 2017;Makkonen et al., 2018;Robertson et al., 2014). Conceptualized as a process value co-destruction, is complex, dynamic and time dependent, with loss-cycles, spirals and domino effects (Díaz-Méndez & Saren, 2019;Smith, 2013). ...
The purpose of this cumulative dissertation is to introduce service, conceptualized by service-dominant logic, as a new explanatory framework to improve the understanding of sustainable development. Sustainability is a megatrend that challenges business and marketers to act upon and respond to global social and environmental problems. Even after over more than five decades of research related to sustainability there is a gap in the transformation to sustainable development of firms and society in large. Specifically, there appears to be a significant gap between sustainable awareness and the actual sustainable behavior of actors and organizations. A systematic approach to the topic of greenwashing is provided, including relevant approaches for its avoidance. Furthermore, the dissertation urges the need of a systematic and more general theoretic framework to connect marketing as a social science with sustainable development instead of fragmenting marketing in sub-disciplines (e.g., sustainable marketing, societal marketing, marketing ethics, etc.). S-D logic is proposed as model of marketing covering three dichotomies: (1) micro/macro, (2) positive (questioning what is?) / normative (questioning what ought to be), and (3) profit sector/nonprofit sector. S-D logic´s narrative is the continuing story of actors interacting, resource integrating and exchanging service, and co-creating value through service ecosystems, governed and evaluated through their institutional arrangements. Though with regards to sustainable development the reflection on conceptualizing value co-destruction is critical. For instance, through the value co-creation process negative value might be created for one actor, both actors, third parties, society, or nature. A strong conceptual link between the process of co-creation of value and the process of value co destruction is ascertainable in the sense of contra indication. In addition, the findings of a literature review indicate that further attention should be paid to imbalance, conflict and power relations between actors and the service ecosystem. Furthermore, the concept of service is extended beyond the human-created phenomenon, by observing that ecosystem services exist in the natural world. A change of perspective on nature is proposed to see nature no longer as a source of resource or a simple resource but as a services provider. Thus, the underlying human-nature relationships may improve.
Access to full version: https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:bsz:15-qucosa2-742575
... In essence, the value is held as non-existing within the service itself, rather it is subjectively interpreted and experienced, based on which the consumers then co-create the value-in-use and value-in-context Pl e and C aceres, 2010). Consequently, consumers can only receive the value-laden proposition by the service providers and subsequently transfer it into the actual value by combining their resources with those of the providers (Echeverri and Sk al en, 2011;Robertson et al., 2014). Here, central to SD logic is a resource integration process, which provides both actors with access to each other's resources and opportunities to create new resources (Vargo and Lusch, 2011;Smith, 2013), thereby improving the well-being of service systems, which is the ultimate measure of value (Vargo and Lusch, 2008). ...
Purpose: E-commerce last-mile logistics is undergoing dramatic changes. By inviting consumers to participate in self-collection, they collectively form a mass crowd of resources that can be integrated into last-mile logistics. However, consumers' participation may lead to a spectrum of value outcomes from value co-creation to co-destruction. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to critically examine the value formation process focussing on micro-level practices and resource outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach: Anchored on practice theory and resource conservation theory, content analysis is adopted to analyse 546 practice-based experiences extracted from a leading social media platform.
Findings: The analysis reveals five sequential practices of self-collection: purchasing, delivering, notifying, receiving and confirming. Furthermore, the co-created practices are characterised by gains in material, esteem, social and energy resources of the interacting actors. Meanwhile, the co-destructed practices cause a chain of resource losses, where the interacting actors suffer primary losses which subsequently triggers consumers' coping behaviours and further destroys resources for all.
Research limitations/implications: Focussing on constituent service practices, this study zooms into the value formation process. The authors contribute to logistics literature with a service-dominant logic by stressing end-consumers' involvement in the creation and consumption of last-mile logistics.
Originality/value: This study conceptualises the sources and consequences of the nuanced service practices (value formation or destruction) of self-collection. A unified framework is thus proposed, which guides logistics service providers to channel consumers towards more constructive participation in last-mile logistics.
The integration of modern information technology in healthcare has
given rise to the field of health informatics, with Artificial Intelligence (AI) rapidly
emerging. ChatGPT, a Large Language Model AI, shows promise of being able to
provide medical information but also raises concerns about potential misinformation.
This study investigates the factors influencing the adoption of ChatGPT for medical
self-diagnosis, focusing on perceived trust, privacy, and technological anxiety.
Utilizing a qualitative analysis of survey responses reveals that perceived trust and
technological anxiety significantly impact user intention, while perceived privacy’s
influence is non-existent. Participants appreciate ChatGPT’s potential but maintain
trust in human medical expertise. The study contributes insights for fostering
user acceptance and responsible integration of AI tools like ChatGPT in healthcare,
emphasizing the need for strategies and policies that address trust-building and
mitigate anxiety.
This study examines the reasons why patients are not getting expected value from online medical consultations. It analyzes the influencing mechanism of mismatch between the knowledge base and communication style of patients and physicians on patients’ perceived value. A questionnaire survey was conducted among 452 Chinese patients who had engaged in online interactions with physicians. Findings suggest that knowledge incompatibility and task-oriented communication style differences negatively affect patients’ perceived value by reducing patients’ evaluation of physician contribution behavior. Task analyzability plays a moderating role. The findings contribute to the value co-destruction theory and offer implications for enhancing online medical services.
Digital services should be accessible to all people regardless of their possible disabilities or limitations. Currently, many people are excluded from digital services due to disabilities or limitations in using digital services. Moreover, cognitive accessibility features, such as better usability and understandable content, usually create value for all users, even those without disabilities. This paper argues that failing to design cognitively accessible digital services challenges value co-creation – there is a danger of value co-destruction. To identify enablers for and barriers to designing cognitively accessible digital services, semi-structured in-depth interviews with accessibility experts and professionals were conducted.
ChatGPT is a chatbot that is based on the generative pre-trained transformer (GPT) architecture as an artificial inteligence based large language model. Its widespread use in health care practice, research and education seems to be (increasingly) inevitable. Also considering the relevant limitations regarding privacy, ethics, bias, legal and validity, in this article, its use as a supplement (for sure not as a substitute for physicians) is discussed in light of the recent literature. Particularly, the “opinion“ of ChatGPT about how it can help/harm physiatry is exemplified.
Consumer well‐being (CWB) refers to the cognitive and emotional reactions of consumers in response to their consumption experiences. It encompasses three elements: consumer satisfaction, positive emotions and perceived quality of life. In the past few years, there has been significant research growth in the field of CWB. However, a lack of effort is observed in reviewing this emerging and evolving field of research. This review utilises the Theory–Context–Construct–Methods (TCCM) framework given by Paul and Rosado‐Serrano (2019) (International Marketing Review, 36(6), 830–858), to delve into the prominent theories, contexts (i.e., countries and industries), characteristics (major factors and variables) and methods (i.e., research designs and analysis) used in CWB research spanning over the past 24 years (1998–2022). Through a systematic analysis and synthesis of 142 articles, an overview of this research field is provided, establishing a path for future agenda within the TCCM framework. This review reveals a prevalence of single‐theory approaches, with studies primarily focusing on theories such as the self‐determination theory and the attribution theory. Furthermore, CWB research demonstrates a stronger inclination towards examining the services industry context compared to other industries covered in the literature. Additionally, the review emphasises the need for further research on countries with emerging economies. Detailed future research directions are presented.
Background:
Symptom checkers (SCs) for laypersons' self-assessment and preliminary self-diagnosis are widely used by the public. Little is known about the impact of these tools on health care professionals (HCPs) in primary care and their work. This is relevant to understanding how technological changes might affect the working world and how this is linked to work-related psychosocial demands and resources for HCPs.
Objective:
This scoping review aimed to systematically explore the existing publications on the impacts of SCs on HCPs in primary care and to identify knowledge gaps.
Methods:
We used the Arksey and O'Malley framework. We based our search string on the participant, concept, and context scheme and searched PubMed (MEDLINE) and CINAHL in January and June 2021. We performed a reference search in August 2021 and a manual search in November 2021. We included publications of peer-reviewed journals that focused on artificial intelligence- or algorithm-based self-diagnosing apps and tools for laypersons and had primary care or nonclinical settings as a relevant context. The characteristics of these studies were described numerically. We used thematic analysis to identify core themes. We followed the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews) checklist to report the study.
Results:
Of the 2729 publications identified through initial and follow-up database searches, 43 full texts were screened for eligibility, of which 9 were included. Further 8 publications were included through manual search. Two publications were excluded after receiving feedback in the peer-review process. Fifteen publications were included in the final sample, which comprised 5 (33%) commentaries or nonresearch publications, 3 (20%) literature reviews, and 7 (47%) research publications. The earliest publications stemmed from 2015. We identified 5 themes. The theme finding prediagnosis comprised the comparison between SCs and physicians. We identified the performance of the diagnosis and the relevance of human factors as topics. In the theme layperson-technology relationship, we identified potentials for laypersons' empowerment and harm through SCs. Our analysis showed potential disruptions of the physician-patient relationship and uncontested roles of HCPs in the theme (impacts on) physician-patient relationship. In the theme impacts on HCPs' tasks, we described the reduction or increase in HCPs' workload. We identified potential transformations of HCPs' work and impacts on the health care system in the theme future role of SCs in health care.
Conclusions:
The scoping review approach was suitable for this new field of research. The heterogeneity of technologies and wordings was challenging. We identified research gaps in the literature regarding the impact of artificial intelligence- or algorithm-based self-diagnosing apps or tools on the work of HCPs in primary care. Further empirical studies on HCPs' lived experiences are needed, as the current literature depicts expectations rather than empirical findings.
Objective: Along with the evolution of customers' experience of the brand, the importance of the type of interaction between customers and the brand increases, because just as customers can use the potential of their brand knowledge and skill in creating brand value, if they are dissatisfied with it, They can destroy brand value. Therefore, it is necessary to know the type of interaction of customers with the company during their experience of the brand to identify the state of co-destruction of brand value. Therefore, this study aims to examine the concept of co-destruction of brand value in the interactive process of customer-brand experience.
Methodology: This study is applied in terms of its purpose and qualitative inductive in terms of research type. In this research, the Classical ground theory method has been used to collect data.
Findings: The proposed framework of this research has been presented during three consecutive steps of customer-brand experience and by extracting 157 open codes, 34 concepts and 8 main categories, it has formed the main process of co-destruction of brand value.
Conclusion: The results show that the co-destruction of brand value is formed during an interactive process and its occurrence requires the evolution of the negative experience of the customers about the brand. In other words, all interactions from the time of the wrong initial conflict between the customer and the brand to the moment of their harmful cooperation in production and marketing, lead to the formation of the co-destruction process of the brand value. Therefore, according to the presented framework, companies can monitor all stages of customer-brand experience and prevent this destructive phenomenon from happening in the company by identifying their weak points in interactions.
Estuda-se a automedicação da população com base em informações na Internet durante a pandemia da COVID-19. O problema de pesquisa é: em que medida a população se automedicou com base em informações veiculadas pela internet, durante a pandemia de COVID-19? O objetivo deste trabalho é identificar e descrever como a população buscou, em conteúdos na internet, medicamentos diversos para se automedicar durante a pandemia. Trata-se de pesquisa descritiva, de abordagem quanti-qualitativa de corte transversal. A pesquisa é considerada de opinião, de acordo com a Resolução 510/2016 da CONEP. Os dados foram coletados a partir de um questionário elaborado para atingir os objetivos da pesquisa e foram disponibilizados pelo Google Forms, entre fevereiro e março de 2021. 54 participantes distribuídos em 14 homens e 40 mulheres de diferentes cidades do país. Entre esses, 36 afirmaram ter buscado orientações na internet sobre medicamentos para a COVID-19, entre os quais destacam-se: vitaminas em geral; vermífugos e medicamentos para aumentar a imunidade. Concluiu-se que o distanciamento social e a redução do contato com outros semelhantes conduzem a um gasto de tempo maior diante de aparelhos conectados à internet, o que por conseguinte pode acarretar a automedicação, mesmo em pessoas com nível educacional mais elevado. Palavras-chave: Automedicação na pandemia. Alfabetização digital. Relação médico-paciente.
Introduction
Children’s influenza diagnosis by their guardians has been reported to be highly accurate, but clinical factors that improve the reliability of a guardian’s diagnosis are unclear.
Aim
To determine the accuracy of guardians’ influenza diagnosis of their children, investigate clinical factors that improve the diagnostic accuracy, and determine the additional clinical value of the guardian’s diagnosis.
Methods
A prospective observational study was conducted at a primary care clinic in Japan from December 2017 to April 2019. Pre-examination checklists completed by guardians accompanying children aged
Using a case study of the Songkran festival, this study explores the transformation of cultural practices through the interplay between a hallmark cultural event, tourism, and commercial activities. A methodological triangulation technique involving document analysis, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation was used to pursue the study's aim. A comprehensive model representing the co-creation and co-destruction of cultural practices in a hallmark cultural event is then presented. The model demarcates four phenomena: 1) discouraging commercialisation interplay, 2) supportive interplay, 3) discouraging cultural practices interplay, and 4) parallel phenomenon. Additionally, the study discovered that cultural event management also involves management of spatial and temporal dimensions. The study's findings should encourage stakeholders of cultural events to develop clear roadmaps when planning the long-term development of cultural events. This ensures that any loss of cultural significance can be minimised while also meeting the needs and expectations of different stakeholders.
Crisis informatics research has examined geographically bounded crises, such as natural or man-made disasters, identifying the critical role of local and hyper-local information focused on one geographic area in crisis communication. The COVID-19 pandemic represents an understudied kind of crisis that simultaneously hits locales across the globe, engendering an emergent form of crisis communication, which we term cross-local communication. Cross-local communication is the exchange of crisis information between geographically dispersed locales to facilitate local crisis response. To unpack this notion, we present a qualitative study of an online migrant community of overseas Taiwanese who supported fellow Taiwanese from afar. We detail four distinctive types of cross-local communication: situational updates, risk communication, medical consultation, and coordination. We discuss how the current pandemic situation brings new understandings to crisis informatics and online health community literature, and what role digital technologies could play in supporting cross-local communication.
Background
Premature ejaculation (PE) is one of the most described psychosocial stress and sexual complaints worldwide. Previous investigations have focused predominantly on the prospective identification of cases that meet researchers’ specific criteria. The genuine demand from patients with regard to information on PE and related issues may thus be neglected.
Objective
This study aims to examine the online search trend and user demand related to PE on a national and regional scale using the dominant major search engine in mainland China.
Methods
The Baidu Index was queried using the PE-related terms for the period of January 2011 to December 2020. The search volume for each term was recorded to analyze the search trend and demographic distributions. For user interest, the demand and trend data were collected and analyzed.
ResultsOf the 36 available PE search keywords, 4 PE searching topics were identified. The Baidu Search Index for each PE topic varied from 46.30% (86,840,487/187,558,154) to 6.40% (12,009,307/187,558,154). The annual percent change (APC) for the complaint topic was 48.80% (P
In 2 studies Ss received a clear or an unclear diagnosis, indicating either disease or no disease. In Experiment 1, Ss responded to a hypothetical bacteria test. In Experiment 2, Ss performed 2 saliva tests purportedly measuring risk for pancreatic disorders. Responses to the unclear well diagnosis were unique in several ways. Ss thought the test more invalid, inferred a greater likelihood of illness from a 2nd identical result, saw the disorder as more pernicious, and held no self-protective beliefs about the test or the disease. Moreover, desire for treatment among these Ss was as great as among those receiving a clear diagnosis of illness. Possible mechanisms are discussed, as are potential applications to clinical issues and to the development and maintenance of hypochondriacal health concerns.
Cigarette advertising has often used health appeals, but has rarely been informative about health effects. Many historical examples and Canadian data suggest that the Ringold and Calfee [1989] data on “health information” must be very cautiously interpreted. To be carefully considered are their conservative definition of “health,” liberal definition of “information,” exclusive focus on words, disregard of claim emphasis or repetition in an ad, and coding procedures. The deregulation their conclusion suggests holds little promise for producing cigarette advertising with greater informativeness and consumers with better information.
Customers are often involved in the design or delivery of services, and in this respect, they function as coproducers of the service. What happens when customers fail to perform their roles effectively? Customer failure is not uncommon; the authors cite research indicating that customers cause about one-third of all service problems. To study the issue of customer failure and its prevention, the authors conducted interviews with managers and customers in a variety of industries about experiences of customer failure, developed case studies related to the topic and conducted secondary research to identify examples of best practices in customer-failure prevention. From their research, the authors conclude that recovering from instances of customer failure is difficult, in part because the customer and the company may have different views of the causes of the problem. As a result, companies should focus on preventing customer failures. An effective three-step approach is first to collect diagnostic data about where customer failures occur and then to analyze the root causes of cases of customer failure - whether the root causes are issues of technology, people, processes or the design of the physical environment that customers encounter. The third step is to establish preventive solutions, such as process redesign. The authors cite a number of examples of companies that try to prevent customer failures. For instance, customers of Weight Watchers International Inc., may offer each other encouragement at Weight Watchers' meetings and thus help prevent one another from failing in their weight-loss plans.
The notion of value co-creation is central to the discourse of Service-Dominant Logic (S-D logic) yet there remains little agreement among academics seeking to explain or research the value co-creation process. We distinguish service co-creation from the S-D logic notion of value co-creation, and conceptualise service co-creation as a process comprising value potential, resource integration, and resource modification. Value, being a personal evaluative judgement, cannot be co-created; rather it is realised by actors as an outcome of service co-creation. We define service co-creation as planned resource integration behaviours by actors intended to realise a value proposition. We provide guidance to assist practitioners seeking to enhance the value their customers might realise.
Much current research fails to provide in-depth explanations as to how and with what resources frontline employees deal with incidents where customers display dysfunctional behaviour. By drawing on theory of implicit knowledge and practical judgement this paper aims to explain this and conceptualize inherent structures and sub-mechanisms, central to service marketing. The analysis is based on in-depth interviews and narratives from four different industries, each representing service provision wherein customer misbehaviour is found to be frequent. The results display linkages between the central dimensions of dealing with customer misbehaviour. When incidents of misbehaviour occur they are met by tactics ranging from routinized action to more analytical and strategic approaches. These tactics are guided by underlying mechanisms in the form of practical judgements based on rules, balanced adjustment or reflection, with the judgements in turn being informed by implicit knowledge based on norms, schemes, or multi-perspective thinking. The study reveals patterns of linkages between these.
This article explores in-depth what health care customers actually do when they cocreate value. Combining previously published research with data collected from depth interviews, field observation, and focus groups, the authors identify distinct styles of health care customer value cocreation practice. Importantly, the authors show how customers can contribute to their own value creation through their own (self) activities in managing their health care. Building on past work in service-dominant (S-D) logic, consumer culture theory and social practice theory, the authors identify “roles,” “activities,” and “interactions” that underlie customer cocreation of value in health care. The authors uncover five groupings of customer value cocreation practices yielding a typology of practice styles and link these to quality of life. The practice styles are “team management,” “insular controlling,” “partnering,” “pragmatic adapting,” and “passive compliance.” Two in particular, team management and partnering, should be encouraged by managers as they tend to be associated with higher quality of life. The authors provide a health care Customer Value Cocreation Practice Styles (CVCPS) typology. The usefulness of the typology is demonstrated by showing links to quality of life and its potential application to other health care settings.
Consumer vulnerability is a sometimes misunderstood or misused concept that is equated erroneously with demographic characteristics, stigmatization, consumer protection, unmet needs, discrimination, or disadvantage. This article seeks to clarify the boundaries for what is and what is not consumer vulnerability. By explicating the key themes of consumer vulnerability from previous studies in the consumer research and marketing literatures, the authors build a definition and model to explain that consumer vulnerability is multidimensional, context specific, and does not have to be enduring. The authors clarify that multiple and simultaneous internal and external factors contribute to consumer experiences of vulnerability. They conclude by proposing some ways the consumer-driven definition of consumer vulnerability can be implemented into research and policy decisions. Most important, their implementation focuses on treating consumers as they wish to be treated, not as well-meaning others think they should be treated, and on directing policy toward facilitating individual empowerment.
In this paper, we explore the role and scope of technology in value co-creation, service innovation and service systems—value co-creation configurations of people technology and value propositions (Maglio and Spohrer in J Acad Mark Sci 36:18–20, 2008). We draw on a structurational model of technology (Orlikowsky in Organ Sci 3(3):398–427, 1992) to provide a framework for considering the role of technology in service systems and how it influences and is influenced by human actions (i.e., practices) and institutions. We broaden the scope of technology in this model, beyond a material artifact, or outcome of human actions, by applying an S-D logic, service ecosystems (Vargo and Lusch in J Market 68(1):1–17, 2004, Ind Mark Manag 40(2):181–187, 2011a) approach, which focuses on the processes by which value is co-created and new ways of creating value (i.e., innovation) emerge. In this view, technology can be conceptualized as an operant resource—one that is capable of acting on other resources to create value—and, thus, becomes a critical resource for value co-creation, service innovation and systems (re)formation. We argue that the consideration of technology as an operant resource in service (eco)systems provides a more encompassing view for systematically studying the way in which technologies are integrated as resources, value is collaboratively created, and service is innovated.
Many people search online for health information and make self-diagnoses. However, little is known about factors affecting whether a person is able to make an accurate Internet-based diagnosis. An online survey (N = 209) was conducted to explore the predictors of Internet-based diagnosis accuracy. A multiple regression analysis showed that approximately 22% of the variance of diagnosis accuracy was accounted for by the linear combination of health-information orientation, eHealth literacy, prior knowledge, and Internet search time. However, only prior knowledge and search time were significant predictors of diagnosis accuracy, with prior knowledge positively and search time negatively related to diagnosis accuracy. A paired t test indicated that participants' diagnosis accuracy increased after the Internet search. This study implies that simply searching all over the Internet for a long time may not produce accurate diagnoses. Online health searches can be beneficial supplements, but they should not replace the expertise of a physician.
The Internet provides information on virtually any subject. This is readily accessible to the public, although of variable quality. The Internet also plays an important role in contemporary psychiatry with the dissemination of information on disorders, research and clinical practice. Our patients may have access to mental health web-sites, consulting electronic sources when making decisions that affect their health. The implications of patient power on the Internet are discussed.
Given the significant, sustained growth in services experienced worldwide, Arizona State University’s Center for Services Leadership embarked on an 18-month effort to identify and articulate a set of global, interdisciplinary research priorities focused on the science of service. Diverse participation from academics in a variety of disciplines working in institutions around the world—in collaboration with business executives who lead organizations ranging from small startups to Global 1000 companies—formed the basis for development of the priorities. The process led to the identification of the following 10 overarching research priorities:
• Fostering service infusion and growth
• Improving well-being through transformative service
• Creating and maintaining a service culture
• Stimulating service innovation
• Enhancing service design
• Optimizing service networks and value chains
• Effectively branding and selling services
• Enhancing the service experience through cocreation
• Measuring and optimizing the value of service
• Leveraging technology to advance service
For each priority, several important and more specific topic areas for service research emerged from the process. The intent is that the priorities will spur service research by shedding light on the areas of greatest value and potential return to academia, business, and government. Through academic, business, and government collaboration, we can enhance our understanding of service and create new knowledge to help tackle the most important opportunities and challenges we face today.
Purpose
Building on the service‐centered dominant logic, this paper aims to investigate the effects of firm knowledge (knowledge of customers, industry, and practices) and synergistic combinations of different types of employee knowledge as a foundation for competitive advantage in retail and service organizations. Specifically, it seeks to theorize that the firm's operant knowledge resources combine to develop the service‐based value proposition of enhanced ability to meet customer needs that results in greater performance.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey methodology was used to test the hypotheses using a sample of 293 retail and service providers.
Findings
Employees' knowledge of its customers and competitors allow the firm to enhance its ability to meet customer needs, whereas knowledge of firm practices, in isolation, does not enhance a firm's ability to meet customer needs. When looking at the synergistic combination of employees' knowledge (i.e. the two‐way interactions and the three‐way interaction of knowledge of customers; knowledge of firm practices; knowledge of industry) several interesting insights emerge to help to understand how to enhance a firm's ability to meet customer needs.
Research limitations/implications
Since researchers have yet to fully explore the effects of knowledge as operant resources and their conversion into capabilities, this study uses a dynamic capabilities approach and demonstrates that providing front‐line employees with the knowledge necessary to understand the firm's consumer base allows the firm to develop the ability to meet customer needs (i.e. a capability), which in turn allows the organization to reap the economic benefits of a satisfied and returning customer base.
Practical implications
The two‐way and three way interactions provide new insights into the synergistic employment of operant knowledge resources.
Originality/value
The results suggest that operant knowledge resources may not be equally created as different combinations of operant resources result in superior capabilities than other combinations.
Purpose – Noting that a fundamental tenet of service-dominant (S-D) logic is the co-creation of value-in-use, this paper aims to explore the theoretical possibility that the interactions between service systems cannot only co-create value, but also have adverse consequences leading to actual value co-destruction. Design/methodology/approach – This conceptual paper critically reviews the dominance of value co-creation and value-in-use in S-D logic. Noting the relative lack of research in the converse possibility, the study proposes and explores the implications of value co-destruction as a new concept which should be introduced within the framework of S-D logic. Findings – The study proposes a formal definition for the new proposed concept of value co-destruction. It describes in detail the process by which it occurs, showing that value can be co-destroyed through the interactions between different systems, resulting in value destruction-through-misuse. Indeed, value co-destruction occurs when a service system accidentally or intentionally misuses resources (its own resources and/or those of another service system) by acting in an inappropriate or unexpected manner. Research limitations/implications – This paper is purely conceptual and exploratory. Empirical examination of the theoretical findings regarding value-co-destruction is required. Possible avenues of interest for such empirical research of value co-destruction are suggested. Practical implications – Limiting the occurrence of misuse by aligning the mutual expectations of interacting service systems should reduce the risks of value co-destruction. Recovering from misuse should also be considered. Originality/value – This study is apparently the first to have introduced the notion of value co-destruction into the conceptual framework of S-D logic.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the introduction of self‐service technology (SST) in health diagnosis as a means to reduce costs and improve quality in the health care sector – at the same time.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey with an internet‐based medical self‐diagnosis application as the focal technology is conducted. The research hypotheses are tested by using a scenario and questionnaire approach, in which respondents prior to responding read a scenario.
Findings
To test the hypotheses, structural equation modeling using LISREL was performed. It was found that the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) for users, described according to the Technology Readiness Index (TRI) as pioneers, has a very good ability to predict future behavioral intent. TAM has an excellent capability to predict future behavioral intent of this new application in this new context, i.e. health care services.
Research limitations/implications
The paper only tests TAM for a given population described as pioneers. Future research should test for other categories of users, as this may impact different drivers of behavioral intent/adoption in the TAM.
Practical implications
For policy makers (e.g. politicians), this study has great implications as it documents a methodology of testing a population's receptiveness to new technology – technology that can greatly improve quality, costs and satisfaction issues with government services and reduce risk when implementing the new service.
Originality/value
In the context of increased healthcare spending and possibly unsustainable healthcare‐funding models, the current research investigated people's readiness and attitude toward performing self‐diagnosis which may offer a patient‐centered access to health services. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this has never been done before.
Objective To measure the performance of smartphone applications that evaluate photographs of skin lesions and provide the user with feedback about the likelihood of malignancy.
Design Case-control diagnostic accuracy study.
Setting Academic dermatology department.
Participants and Materials Digital clinical images of pigmented cutaneous lesions (60 melanoma and 128 benign control lesions) with a histologic diagnosis rendered by a board-certified dermatopathologist, obtained before biopsy from patients undergoing lesion removal as a part of routine care.
Main Outcome Measures Sensitivity, specificity, and positive and negative predictive values of 4 smartphone applications designed to aid nonclinician users in determining whether their skin lesion is benign or malignant.
Results Sensitivity of the 4 tested applications ranged from 6.8% to 98.1%; specificity, 30.4% to 93.7%; positive predictive value, 33.3% to 42.1%; and negative predictive value, 65.4% to 97.0%. The highest sensitivity for melanoma diagnosis was observed for an application that sends the image directly to a board-certified dermatologist for analysis; the lowest, for applications that use automated algorithms to analyze images.
Conclusions The performance of smartphone applications in assessing melanoma risk is highly variable, and 3 of 4 smartphone applications incorrectly classified 30% or more of melanomas as unconcerning. Reliance on these applications, which are not subject to regulatory oversight, in lieu of medical consultation can delay the diagnosis of melanoma and harm users.
The purpose of this study is to provide evidence for strategic planning regarding e-health development in U.S. hospitals. A content analysis of a representative sample of the U.S. hospital Web sites has revealed how U.S. hospitals have taken advantage of the 21 patient-oriented interactive tools identified in this study. Significant gaps between various types of hospitals have also been found. It is concluded that although the majority of the U.S. hospitals have adopted traditional functional tools, they need to make significant inroad in implementing the core e-business tools to serve their patients/users, making their Web sites more efficient marketing tools.
Computer systems cannot improve organizational performance if they aren't used. Unfortunately, resistance to end-user systems by managers and professionals is a widespread problem. To better predict, explain, and increase user acceptance, we need to better understand why people accept or reject computers. This research addresses the ability to predict peoples' computer acceptance from a measure of their intentions, and the ability to explain their intentions in terms of their attitudes, subjective norms, perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and related variables. In a longitudinal study of 107 users, intentions to use a specific system, measured after a one-hour introduction to the system, were correlated 0.35 with system use 14 weeks later. The intention-usage correlation was 0.63 at the end of this time period. Perceived usefulness strongly influenced peoples' intentions, explaining more than half of the variance in intentions at the end of 14 weeks. Perceived ease of use had a small but significant effect on intentions as well, although this effect subsided over time. Attitudes only partially mediated the effects of these beliefs on intentions. Subjective norms had no effect on intentions. These results suggest the possibility of simple but powerful models of the determinants of user acceptance, with practical value for evaluating systems and guiding managerial interventions aimed at reducing the problem of underutilized computer technology.
Marketing inherited a model of exchange from economics, which had a dominant logic based on the exchange of "goods," which usually are manufactured output. The dominant logic focused on tangible resources, embedded value, and transactions. Over the past several decades, new perspectives have emerged that have a revised logic focused on intangible resources, the cocreation of value, and relationships. The authors believe that the new per- spectives are converging to form a new dominant logic for marketing, one in which service provision rather than goods is fundamental to economic exchange. The authors explore this evolving logic and the corresponding shift in perspective for marketing scholars, marketing practitioners, and marketing educators.
The author presents a framework that considers public health and social issue behaviors and is based on self-interest, exchange, competition, free choice, and externalities. Targets that are prone, resistant, or unable to respond to the manager's goal behave on the basis of their motivation, opportunity, and ability and on a manager's use of the strategies and tactics inherent in education, marketing, and law.
A huge amount of medical information is available on the Internet for both experts and laypersons. These resources are frequently used to answer current medical questions and are thus likely to influence the behavior of the users. Criteria for assessing the quality of medical Internet resources have been established by a number of authors and institutions to provide reliable medical information on the Internet for both patients and physicians. Clinical studies on the impact of information on the Internet are still lacking. The next step is to evaluate the outcome of such information services and to prove that they affect health-related parameters. Due to different constraints, classical strategies of controlled clinical trials can only be partly applied. New methods have to be developed and validated in practice.
Objectives
To identify what factors predict patients' interest in using Internet health information in the light of poor uptake of a free, guided Internet service in one inner-city general practice.
Methods
Questionnaires were administered over a five-day period to consecutive adult patients attending two Manchester general practices: An inner-city practice serving a relatively deprived patient population where the free Internet service had previously been available, and a suburban practice serving a relatively affluent population. Data were analysed using multiple regression to identify predictors of self-reported interest in using the Internet for health information.
Results
A total of 753 (74%) patients completed the questionnaire although analyses were restricted to 660 (65%) cases. Independent predictors of patient-reported interest in getting health information from the Internet were (in order of relative ‘importance’): Positive outcome expectancy (i.e. the patient's strength of belief that it would enable them to deal better with their health); previous use of health websites; positive ‘self-efficacy’ (i.e. patients' confidence in their ability to use the technology); higher education; a positive attitude to getting health information from alternative sources; social deprivation; and having school-age children living at home. Level of Internet access was an important determinant of self-efficacy, but home access was the key predictor of outcome expectancy and past use of ‘e-health’.
Conclusions
Access, demographics and, particularly, motivational factors all influence patients' interest in the Internet as a health resource. Proposals to encourage more widespread use of digital health information need to take account of this complexity and not deal with access issues alone.
The author presents a framework that considers public health and social issue behaviors and is based on self-interest, exchange, competition, free choice, and externalities. Targets that are prone, resistant, or unable to respond to the manager's goal behave on the basis of their motivation, opportunity, and ability and on a manager's use of the strategies and tactics inherent in education, marketing, and law.
Past classifications of services have pigeonholed industries into cells to highlight differences among service industries and in turn to develop industry-specific marketing implications. However, the acceleration of technological advances in recent years is making it possible for service firms across different industries to deliver similar forms of technology-based service with similar marketing implications. At the same time, service firms (irrespective of industry) are able to offer customers a wide range of technology-based service delivery options with different marketing implications for each. A framework is proposed for classifying technology-based service delivery options that could be applied to any service industry where technology can be used in delivery. The classification scheme would allow a given service firm to systematically investigate technology-based service delivery options in terms of customer needs and marketing potential and as a basis for market segmentation. The framework may be used to organize the literature as well as to facilitate raising research questions on issues such as service quality and customer satisfaction, employee and/or customer training and appropriate marketing strategies.
Cyberchondria, a term which was recently coined and popularized by the media, is receiving more and more attention from the medical community as consumers become increasingly reliant on online health information for symptom checking and self-diagnosis. This column provides a background to the term, discusses the pivotal role which health anxiety can play in online health information seeking, and profiles a number of high-quality online symptom checkers as a way to help alleviate cyberchondria.
Recent service perspectives (represented by service–dominant logic, service logic and service science; henceforth, service-logics) provide a mindset for understanding value co-creation as a mutual service process in which firms and customers integrate their resources. The idea that customer and firm resources should be jointly considered to properly explain perceived value is appealing, particularly in interactional settings such as e-commerce. However, we conduct a literature review and show that cross-sectional empirical e-commerce research intended to explain customer value perceptions continues to rely heavily on a unilateral approach (firm resources), which could be misleading. Subsequently, we identify possible barriers for considering service-logics in e-commerce research, which include the lack of a clear definition and classification of resources and an integrated set of valid and reliable measures of resources. We then take a step forward towards overcoming these barriers by providing a summary, a synthesis and new ideas or, at least, a new emphasis on the implications of existing ideas. The new idea/emphasis is that cross-sectional empirical e-commerce research should jointly consider customer resources and firm resources. No prior work has stressed this proposition. We provide a synthesis by re-organizing scarce and scattered service-logics-oriented existing literature on resources to offer a definition and a comprehensive framework for the classification of resources. Finally, we provide a summary by putting together valid and reliable measures of firm resources and customer resources that have been sparsely considered in the 69 studies selected. These measures could be used by researchers in order to model and test value co-creation processes in e-commerce B2C contexts.
The Internet continues to grow in popularity, particularly the segment known as the World Wide Web. Nielsen Media Research recently reported1 that up to 24% of all people in the United States aged 16 years and older had access to the Internet as of March 1996. The universal graphical interface supported by Web browsing programs has made the riches of the Internet available to the masses, including those with little computer knowledge or skill. A large and increasing number of medical sites are available.2I recently searched the Web for the key words medical or health and retrieved more than 3 800 000 documents. Internet-related medical publications increased from 0 in 1992 to 107 in 1995.3
The scope of health-related applications on the Internet is as broad as medicine itself. Most medical schools and many hospitals have Web sites, which, in part, serve as marketing devices, but
This article examines the interactive relationship between intangible, human capabilities (operant resources) and tangible, physical assets (operand resources) in an era of global interconnectedness. It does so within the context of service-dominant logic and the challenge of sustainability in a world of resource scarcity. Introducing object-oriented philosophy as an alternative framework, this paper challenges ideas about the superiority of certain kinds of resources while confronting a pervasive culture of demateriality in marketing and contemporary post-industrial theory - the idea that "stuff'' does not count. The article offers a parsimonious model of a more holistic conceptualization of resources. It demonstrates the complex entanglement of operant and operand resources, finding that this entanglement is a precondition to marketing-related issues of natural resource selection, globalization, sustainability, and distributive justice.
Service-Dominant Logic (S-D logic) theory and related literature is reviewed to demonstrate S-D logic's potential to provide new insights for understanding an important contemporary issue in service delivery: the application of self-service technology (SST) to customer service. S-D logic considers operant resources to be the key to gaining a competitive advantage. Consequently, the most important aspect of the application of SST is the requirement for the customer to provide the operant resource at the point of transaction. It is argued that the implementation of SST could be improved by encompassing an understanding of the resources available to the customer and the value (or lack of value) experienced by the customer in using SST. Gaps in existing knowledge are identified, particularly in relation to the application of SST in business-to-business (B2B) contexts. An agenda for further research is outlined and a range of management implications are discussed.
Purpose
– Internet forums are an important arena for information exchange between consumers. Despite healthcare being one of the most accessed information categories on the internet, knowledge of exchange between patients in online communities remains limited. Specifically, little is known about how patients negotiate knowledge in online forums to understand and manage their diseases. This paper aims to illustrate this by presenting data that demonstrate the construction of tacit knowledge within online health communities, and how consumers exercise their “voice” within complex professional services.
Design/methodology/approach
– This paper reports an exploratory single case study of an online discussion forum for breast cancer sufferers, in which participants discuss their experience with healthcare services and related pharmaceutical products. Textual data were collected and analysed from the forum retrospectively from an 11-month period, entailing contributions from 252 participants.
Findings
– The paper challenges prevalent managerial and professional perspectives that evaluate online health information in terms of its correspondence with conventional medical information. In the absence of normative assumptions that broadly guide health service encounters, forum participants negotiate their understandings in the context of their personal experience.
Practical implications
– This novel culture offers potential for developing rich and sometimes more appropriate understandings of health than available from the medical establishment. It discusses how service providers can exploit such opportunities towards improving service provision, facilitating the consumer voice within a complex service.
Originality/value
– Re-evaluating the value of online forums, the paper identifies the mechanisms through which health consumers co-create knowledge within online communities, and how these mechanisms can inform and complement future service provision.
Purpose
– This paper aims to adopt a conservation of resources (COR) theoretical approach to examine the process of value co-destruction (VCD) emanating from the misuse of customer resources by organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
– A critical incidents approach was adopted where 120 customers recounted their negative experiences. The analysis identified both the nature of resources and processes involved.
Findings
– From a customer perspective, the VCD process is triggered by a failure of the resource integration process to co-create expected value (resources). This involves customers in unexpected primary, and often secondary, resource loss. Loss “cycles” or “spirals” develop impacting negatively on well-being. Customers' attempts to restore their resources through coping strategies typically involve loss of well-being for the organisation.
Research limitations/implications
– The research is limited to a relatively small sample of UK customers involving diverse contexts. However, COR theory provides a framework for a better understanding of customer perceived value, the value co-creation and co-destruction process.
Practical implications
– The findings offer a new perspective to practitioners for understanding customer expectations and behaviour. There is a need to re-evaluate and re-design value propositions in line with organisational capabilities and customers' resource needs.
Social implications
– Organisations' misuse of customers' resources negatively impacts on “well-being”: a phenomenon of increasing interest at the societal level.
Originality/value
– This study is the first to empirically examine the concept of VCD, as perceived and experienced by customers, from a resource ecology perspective. It contributes to the growing body of work deriving from the service-dominant logic approach to value co-creation.
Purpose
– Employees have traditionally played a major role in the customer ' s service experience. Yet self-service technology (SST) replaces the customer-service employee experience with a customer-technology experience. This paper seeks to use a service-dominant logic lens to gain fresh insight into the consumer experience of SST. In particular, it aims to consider the resources that are integrated when consumers use SSTs, their co-production role and what might constitute value.
Design/methodology/approach
– The paper presents findings from 24 semi-structured interviews that focus on the everyday experiences of consumers in using SST. Both genders and all socio-economic categories within all adult age groups from 18 to 65+ were included.
Findings
– There is a danger that organizations embrace SST as an economic and efficient mechanism to “co-create” value with consumers when they are merely shifting responsibility for service production. The paper identifies risks when customers become partial employees and concludes that customers should perceive the value they gain from using SST to be at least commensurate with their co-production role.
Research limitations/implications
– The qualitative study was confined to the consumer perspective. Future research within organizations and among employees who support consumers using SST would extend understanding, as would research within the business-to-business (B2B) context. Quantitative studies could measure the frequency and extent of the phenomena the authors report and assist with market segmentation strategies.
Practical implications
– The application of service-dominant logic highlights potential risks and managerial challenges as self-service, and consequent value co-creation, relies on the operant resources of customers, who lack the tacit knowledge of employees and are less easy to manage. There is also the need to manage a new employee role: “self-service education, support and recovery”.
Originality/value
– The paper draws attention to managerial challenges for organizations to ensure that SST adoption enhances and does not destroy value. Additionally, it highlights the importance of distinguishing between co-production and co-creation.
This research examines how consumers use base rate (e.g., disease prevalence in a population) and case information (e.g., an individual’s disease symptoms) to estimate health risks. Drawing on construal level theory, we propose that consumers’ reliance on base rate (case information) will be enhanced (weakened) by psychological distance. A corollary of this premise is that self-positivity (i.e., underestimating self-risk vs. other-risk) is likely when the disease base rate is high but the case information suggests low risk. In contrast, self-negativity (i.e., overestimating self-risk vs. other-risk) is likely when the disease base rate is low, but case information implies high risk. Six experiments provide convergent support for this thesis, using different operationalizations of construal level, base rate, and case risk across multiple health domains. Our findings inform the extant literature on health-risk perception and also provide theoretical implications for research on social comparisons, as well as that on the use of base rate versus case information.
Self-service technologies (SSTs) are increasingly changing the way customers interact with firms to create service outcomes. Given that the emphasis in the academic literature has focused almost exclusively on the interpersonal dynamics of service encounters, there is much to be learned about customer interactions with technology-based self-service delivery options. In this research, the authors describe the results of a critical incident study based on more than 800 incidents involving SSTs solicited from customers through a Web-based survey. The authors categorize these incidents to discern the sources of satisfaction and dissatisfaction with SSTs, The authors present a discussion of the resulting critical incident categories and their relationship to customer attributions, complaining behavior, word of mouth, and repeat purchase intentions, which is followed by implications for managers and researchers.
More than one-third of US individuals turn to the Internet to diagnose health problems, according to results from Health Online 2013, a survey (http://tinyurl.com/blqudew) of the online health behavior of Americans conducted by the Pew Research Center's Internet and American Life Project. Slightly more than half of those who reported using the Internet to research health problems discussed what they found with a physician.
Previous research has found that interactional justice and distributive justice are critical factors influencing customer satisfaction after a service recovery. In addition, previous service recovery research has found that satisfaction is an important determinant of key outcome variables such as trust, commitment, and negative word-of-mouth. The current study extends previous research by investigating the role of service failure severity within the existing framework of service recovery research. The results indicate that service failure severity has a significant influence on satisfaction, trust, commitment, and negative word-of-mouth. The results also provide partial support for a moderating influence of service failure severity. Implications and areas for future research are discussed.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the user's perspective in evaluating e‐health services and to present evaluation criteria that influence users' utilization and satisfaction of e‐health services.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on two lines of studies relating to the behaviour of users of new products or services and on broad examining and critical analysis of the existing evaluations initiatives in e‐governments services generally but also particularly in an e‐health context.
Findings
The paper argues that e‐health services evaluation frameworks should be criteria‐based, while the criteria can be grounded in, and derived from, one or more specific perspectives or theories, and cannot be entirely framed within the bounds of a single theory or perspective. The paper suggests an evaluation framework for e‐health services and provides a set of clear and useful e‐health evaluation criteria that can be accommodated by such a framework.
Research limitations/implications
The limitation of this paper lies in the absence of empirical validation and examination of the proposed evaluation criteria that have not yet been applied in the fieldwork. Hence, the proposed criteria require an empirical validation which will be performed by the authors in the next stage of this research using a multiple case study strategy and will form the basis for further research.
Practical implications
The proposed evaluation criteria can be used to help achieve better user services utilization, to serve as part of an e‐health evaluation framework, and to address areas that require further attention in the development of future e‐health initiatives.
Originality/value
The paper presents a well‐argued and balanced hierarchy of evaluation criteria that can contribute to an area of research which is still in its infancy in terms of development and management.
The use of technology to enable or facilitate the delivery of services has the potential to benefit customers and service providers alike. Correspondingly, however, the purposes to which technology is put, and the manner in which it is used, also has the potential to disenfranchise customers. Therefore the operational desirability and gains of any employment of technology to facilitate service provision should be balanced against the perceptions and behavioural response of customers. Our research aims to shed light on the reasons why customers adopt or reject technologically facilitated means of service delivery, and to develop a means by which likely adoption or rejection may be predicted. The research we have undertaken to date suggests that adoption or rejection of technologically facilitated services is moderated by the personal capacity and willingness of individuals.
Purpose – This study seeks to adopt the perspective of service (dominant) logic to investigate the impact of three resource inputs (service content, service process, and service configurations) on the perceptions of value of e-service customers. Design/methodology/approach – An online study is conducted among 667 customers of a Finnish health-care web site. Findings – The study finds that content of various services have differential impacts on customers' perceptions of value. The study also finds that some service configurations (combinations of services) are more value-enhancing than others. Research limitations/implications – The empirical study was limited to a Finnish health-care site. Future studies could use this research model to investigate different services and cultures to improve the generalisability of the findings. Practical implications – Service providers should note that peer services (such as discussion groups) were more value-enhancing than professional services (such as an advice database). Recognition of the most appealing services and service configurations enables managers to develop and market their services more effectively. Originality/value – The study is one of the first to demonstrate how e-service research and practice can benefit by taking a service logic perspective in which service content, service process, and service configurations are treated as input resources in the value-creation processes of customers.
Self-diagnosis has been around for many years. In today's society with free access to information, particularly through the Internet, it is more prominent than ever. With new information sources available to patients, doctors may have their diagnostic process influenced. This is the case of a gentleman who self-diagnosed, and subsequently influenced his doctor's diagnostic process, with results detrimental to his outcome. It illustrates the importance of awareness of the risks of self diagnosis, and management of patients who present with information and preconceived ideas regarding their condition.
The author presents a framework that considers public health and social issue behaviors and is based on self-interest, exchange, competition, free choice, and externalities. Targets that are prone, resistant, or unable to respond to the manager's goal behave on the basis of their motivation, opportunity, and ability and on a manager's use of the strategies and tactics inherent in education, marketing, and law.
Health care is an enormously expensive, highly complex, universally used service that significantly affects economies and the quality of daily living. Service management, operations, and marketing scholars have much to offer to a critically important, intellectually challenging, but deeply troubled health care service sector. In this article, the authors use the opportunity they had to study at one of the world's most admired medical institutions--Mayo Clinic--as the basis for discussing the similarities and dissimilarities between health care and other services. The article takes the reader "inside" health care. The authors challenge service scholars to consider health care for their research activities and propose areas for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Increasing use of information and communication technologies is said to be transforming health care. Telehealthcare enables medical consultations to be conducted between patients and health professionals across different locations. Such technologies imply new relationships between patients and health professionals. This study aimed to understand how policy and practice in relation to telehealthcare suggests new conceptualisations of ‘the patient’. In-depth semistructured interviews (n = 38) were conducted with key informants from across the UK, known to have involvement or interest in telehealthcare from a variety of perspectives: health professionals (n = 11), patient advocates (n = 7), telemedicine experts (n = 6), policy-makers (n = 4), administrators (n = 4), researchers (n = 3) and technologists (n = 3). Interviews were conducted either in person or over the telephone, and were audio-recorded. Data were analysed thematically with ongoing cross-validation of data interpretation between members of the research team. The results indicated divergent views about the role of the patient, although accounts of patients becoming ‘educated self-managers’, taking on a more active role in their healthcare, were predominant. Beliefs about the impact of telehealthcare on patients were focused on perceived ‘priorities’ such as access, location of services, confidentiality and choice; however, there remains little understanding of the trade-offs that patients are willing to make in the context of technologically mediated health care. The results also highlight ideas around how patients relate to technologies; the extent to which technologies might fragment care and medicine in new or unexpected ways, and participation and absence of patients in decision-making about policies and services. The results of this study have important implications for the ways in which relationships between health professionals and patients are managed in practice, and raise important questions for public participation in service development.
Marketing’s evolution toward a new dominant logic requires the focus of marketing to be on the intangible, dynamic, operant
resources that are at the heart of competitive advantage and performance. First, building on resource-advantage theory’s notion
of basic resources and higher-order resources, this article proposes a hierarchy of basic, composite, and interconnected operant
resources. Second, reviewing research on business strategy and marketing strategy, several resources that correspond to the
proposed hierarchy are identified and discussed. Third, the notion of developing masterful operant resources is introduced.
Fourth, based on the proposed hierarchy and the notion of masterful operant resources, some exemplars of potential research
avenues for marketing strategy are provided. Finally, the article concludes with the discussion of implications for marketing
practitioners, researchers, and educators. In sum, this article extends and elaborates the concept of operant resources in
the service-dominant logic of marketing.
KeywordsHierarchy of operant resources-Service-dominant logic-Resource-advantage theory-Operant resources-Competences-Capabilities-Marketing strategy
Health providers are challenged to find efficacious ways to provide health education to a population with diverse levels of health literacy. This project sought to test the effectiveness of a website (Diabetes and You) about Type II diabetes designed for non-diabetics with low health literacy. Research participants were observed as they viewed the Diabetes and You website, tested for diabetes knowledge before and after viewing the website, checked for functional health literacy, and interviewed to discover their perceptions of the website. Results indicate that users were engaged and interested in the website and particularly preferred the interactive risk assessment page. Users demonstrated an increase in knowledge about diabetes and its risks after viewing the website. Further research into the most effective ways of delivering health information online to this key target population is necessary to minimize the role of health literacy in limiting these individuals' acquisition and understanding of health information.
Accessibility is one of six quality criteria articulated by the European Commission in its code of conduct for health websites. Readability plays an integral part in determining a website's accessibility. Health information that is hard to read may remain inaccessible to people with low health literacy. This study aimed to calculate the readability of websites on various causes of disease. The names of 22 health conditions were entered into five search engines, and the readability of the first 10 results for each search were evaluated using Gunning FOG, SMOG, Flesch-Kincaid and Flesch Reading Ease tests (n=352). Readability was stratified and assessed by search term, search term complexity, top-level domain and paragraph position. The mean reading grade was 12.30, and the mean FRE was 46.08, scores considered 'difficult'. Websites on certain topics were found to be even harder to read than average. Where conditions had multiple names, searching for the simplest one led to the most readable results. Websites with .gov and .nhs TLDs were the most readable while .edu sites were the least. Within texts, a trend of increasing difficulty was found with concluding paragraphs being the hardest to read. It was also found that some of the most frequent search results (such as Wikipedia pages) were amongst the hardest to read. Health professionals, with the help of public and specialised libraries, need to create and direct patients towards high-quality, plain language health information in multiple languages.
To understand Americans' attitudes concerning health information technology's (IT's) potential to improve health care and differences in those attitudes based on demographics and technological affinity.
A random-digit-dial sample with known probability of selection for every household in the United States with a telephone, plus a supplemental sample of cell phone users. Telephone interviews were conducted from August 2009 through November 2009.
Data were analyzed to present univariate estimates of Americans' opinions of health IT, as well as multivariate logistic regressions to assess hypotheses relating individuals' characteristics to their opinions. Characteristics used in our model include age, race, ethnicity, gender, income, and affinity to technology.
A large majority (78 percent) favor use of electronic medical records (EMRs); believe EMRs could improve care and reduce costs (78 percent and 59 percent, respectively); believe benefits of EMR use outweigh privacy risks (64 percent); and support health care information sharing among providers (72 percent). Regression analyses show more positive attitudes among those with higher incomes and greater comfort using electronic technologies.
The findings suggest that Americans believe that health IT adoption is an effective means to improve the quality and safety of health care.
In 2 studies Ss received a clear or an unclear diagnosis, indicating either disease or no disease. In Experiment 1, Ss responded to a hypothetical bacteria test. In Experiment 2, Ss performed 2 saliva tests purportedly measuring risk for pancreatic disorders. Responses to the unclear well diagnosis were unique in several ways. Ss thought the test more invalid, inferred a greater likelihood of illness from a 2nd identical result, saw the disorder as more pernicious, and held no self-protective beliefs about the test or the disease. Moreover, desire for treatment among these Ss was as great as among those receiving a clear diagnosis of illness. Possible mechanisms are discussed, as are potential applications to clinical issues and to the development and maintenance of hypochondriacal health concerns.