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

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