Seeking Information in Social Media: The Case of the Healthcare Sector
Conference paper
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Abstract
Information acquisition is one of the most important steps of consumer behaviour. Scholars have designed models which show the factors that affect the procedure of information acquisition, paying specific attention on personality traits and types of information sources. The main objective of this paper is to study the impact of information acquisition in social media on patients’ behaviour. In order to achieve this goal, we design a typology of social media and study the impact of information acquisition in each different type on decisions such as the choice of a doctor or the online purchase of medical products/services. Our results are based on a questionnaire-based survey with responses from 1047 Internet users.
Keywords
Social media information value propensity to seek information healthPreview
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