With more than 1 billion Internet users worldwide, the World Wide Web has inevitably made its mark on the global healthcare industry. As a European Union (EU) nation, Greece has not conducted many e-health trend surveys due to the low penetration of the Internet and the continued belief among Greek consumers that the Internet cannot substitute for face-to-face contact with a physician. Yet, the...

BACKGROUND This study analyzed differences between transparency of information disclosure and related demands from the health service consumer's perspective. It also compared how health service providers and consumers are associated by different levels of mandatory information disclosure. METHODS We obtained our research data using a questionnaire survey (health services providers, n = 201; h...

The first essay of this doctoral dissertation empirically measures the business value of personalization using data consisting of 600,000 email advertisements with varying degrees of personalization sent to 35,000 customers over a nine month period. While we confirm that personalization based on customers past interests generates a positive response, we also report evidence that customers are c...

Restaurant inspection reports are an important source of information for the public to evaluate food safety practices at restaurants. This study examined the effect of information source and message style on consumer responses to restaurant inspection reports. The study employed a three (Information source: local health department, newspaper or consumer blog) x three (Message style: numeric, le...

Consumer retrieval of health information through the internet has become prevalent. In the past, physicians provided filtered health information to the consumer. However, the availability of health related information including disease specific research trends over the World Wide Web is useful for clinicians and consumers. The use of internet based health care information by clinicians and cons...

A key strategy for driving improvements in health care quality is providing comparative quality information to consumers. This strategy will not work, and could even be counterproductive, unless (1) consumers are convinced that quality problems are real and consequential and that quality can be improved; (2) purchasers and policymakers make sure that quality reporting is standardized and univer...

A new generation of technologies allows firms to track online consumer behavior with increasing granularity, and to share this information with other firms. This promise of information sharing has driven considerable interest from firms; and its potential for monetization has allowed a large number of online and web services to be available free of charge to consumers (in exchange for behaviora...

A study was conducted by the Oakwood Hospital Library in Dearborn, Michigan, to document health information needs and opinions among staff physicians and area health consumers. The study sought to discover which community sources, besides the hospital library, consumers were consulting for health information and how helpful these sources were; what types of health information physicians were pr...

Consumers‟ privacy and security concerns are magnified as companies rely on worldwide networks for electronic commerce. Global businesses that can persuade consumers to disclose their personal information online are more likely to provide better service and product delivery. In this research, we conducted an empirical study of 809 consumers in the U.S. and India to investigate their online info...

PURPOSE People with disability have a right to assistive technology devices and services, to support their inclusion and participation in society. User-centred approaches aim to address consumer dissatisfaction and sub-optimal outcomes from assistive technology (AT) provision, but make assumptions of consumer literacy and empowerment. Policy discourses about consumer choice prompt careful refle...