Second opinions and online consultations [An article from: Decision Support Systems]

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This digital document is a journal article from Decision Support Systems, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

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Consumers increasingly obtain direct consultations from experts, thanks to the prevalent use of Information Technology and the Internet. Motivated by the online consultation practices of reputed institutions such as Harvard University hospitals and the Cleveland Clinic, we develop a duopoly model and study the strategies of high-quality experts in business-to-consumer consultation markets. Experts decide whether to provide first or second opinions and serve face-to-face and/or online. The experts' skills and the offered quality levels differ. We show that both the elimination of transaction costs and the reduction in the diagnostic accuracy in online markets impact the profitability of selling second opinions more favorably relative to that of selling first opinions, providing incentives for high-quality experts to specialize as second opinion providers. We also show that high-quality experts can charge higher face-to-face prices by adopting the online channel.

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