Prerequisites to developing a health value co-creation chain : the physicians' role in facilitating consumers' digital health information seeking

This file was last viewed in Microsoft EdgeHealth marketers and policymakers have routinely called for more consumer accountability in health care decisions and patient-health provider shared decision-making (SDM). Despite this plea, marketing efforts designed to engage consumers and physicians in health co-creation via patient-provider SDM are ineffective. Digital media’s increased availability offers new opportunities for jointly creating and disseminating valuable health information, which in turn can improve health decision-making, motivate health behavior changes, and enhance health outcomes. However, there is a lack of research empirically investigating the health value co-created through patients’ digital health information seeking. Additionally, research is needed which examines the health provider’s value-facilitating role and other prerequisite conditions for facilitating consumers’ digital health information use. This dissertation fills this gap by examining the role of consumers’ digital health information seeking in developing co-created health value as part of a jointly created patient provider SDM-environment. Specifically, this study explores (a) the different prerequisite conditions to consumers’ health provider-related versus external digital health information seeking, (b) the direct and indirect effects leading to consumers’ external digital health information seeking, and (c) the co-created health consequences in the context of motivating personal health behavior changes and health outcomes. Multivariate regression and structural equation models (SEM) provide analyses of door-to-door survey results from over 300 health consumers demonstrating the ancillary value to the health provider-patient relationship created via encouraging consumers’ digital health information seeking as part of patient-provider SDM. Combined, the results provide implications for the marketing, consumer behavior, and health literature regarding consumers’ and physicians’ health value co-creation roles. The empirical results outline the precursors to motivating digital health information seeking and prerequisite conditions to generating improved health outcomes. First, health providers must have an SDM-orientation, while consumers must also feel shared responsibility for their health decisions and outcomes. Additionally, both parties must equally value digital health information inputs as part of the behavior change process. The results suggest health providers who encourage patients to utilize digital health information strengthen the impact of a collaborative decision-making environment through value facilitation. In particular, marketing efforts directing patients from provider-related to external digital information sources are likely to facilitate greater patient activation in behavior changes leading to better overall health. Finally, this study provides marketing and policy implications for improving health decision-making, health behaviors, and health outcomes via digital-based marketing efforts