Topic:

Online Healthcare Platform Evolution: The Interplay of Bargaining and Network Effects

Time&Date: 

10:30 am -12:00 pm, Nov 29, 2024 (Friday)

Venue

Room D504, Teaching Complex D Building

Speaker:

Prof. Junhong Chu (The University of Hong Kong)

Healthcare constitutes a significant and growing proportion of most countries’ gross domestic product (GDP). Online healthcare platforms, due to their scalability, have emerged as a powerful model to increase efficiency and accessibility. The speed of scaling depends on network effects, especially cross-network effects, among healthcare providers and consumers. These platforms typically use bargaining processes to induce healthcare providers to join, thereby leveraging their larger cross-network effects. We develop a novel modeling approach that combines the estimation of heterogeneous direct and cross-network effects and bargaining outcomes to examine the evolution of such platforms. We
apply our model to data from a prominent Chinese online healthcare platform that connects hospitals and consumers for preventive health checkups. Our results indicate that hospitals exhibiting higher network effects extract more economic value from the platform. Conversely, hospitals with lower network effects gain less economic value. Furthermore, we pinpoint the sources of bargaining power for both hospitals and the platform. Through a series of policy simulations, we provide insights for the platform on how to manage its resource allocation across hospitals and markets to achieve its goals, whether growth or profitability. Additionally, we calculate that consumers on the platform also benefit monetarily, with savings equivalent to two hours of minimum wage earnings.

Keywords: Online Platforms, Bargaining, Network Effects, Healthcare
 

Biography:

Junhong Chu is a professor of marketing at the HKU Business School, the University of Hong Kong. She joined HKU in August 2022. Prior to that, she was a tenured associate professor and Dean’s Chair professor at the NUS Business School. Prof. Chu obtained a BA in international economics in 1991 and a PhD in law (demography) in 1996, both from Peking University, and a PhD in business administration (marketing) in 2006 from the University of Chicago. She was an assistant and an associate professor at the School of Economics, Peking University, and she also visited Harvard University as a research fellow (1998-1999) and University of Michigan as a visiting associate professor (2012-2013). She’s an associate editor of Marketing Science and a senior editor of Journal of Business Research.
Dr. Chu is an empirical modeler and works on big data, doing quantitative research in structural new empirical industrial organization (NEIO). Her research interests include platform markets and the sharing economy, e-commerce, social media, P2P market, retail competition, and networking. Her research has appeared in top marketing and management journals including Marketing Science, Management Science, Journal of Marketing Research, and Journal of Marketing, as well as in general science journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) and Nature Human Behaviour. She was on the editorial board of Marketing Science and Journal of Interactive Marketing. She was a 2011 MSI (Marketing Science Institute) Young Scholar and won NUS Business School Outstanding Researcher awards in 2008 and 2011. 
Owing to her previous academic training, Dr. Chu is also interested in China’s population, environment, and economy. She has published in top demography journals such as Demography and Population and Development Review. 
Dr. Chu has collaborated with Taobao, Lianjia, Didi, Topsky, ComfortDelgro, APM (Suntec City), Anker, and other companies for research and consulting. For more information about Dr. Chu, please visit www.chujunhong.com