From the report: "Online
social media present a unique opportunity for patients to explore their health
issues, share experiential information, and fulfill their need for health. The
shared knowledge provides indirect experience of the sensory aspects of a
medical treatment that are not available from the description of its tangible
aspects alone. In this study, we examine various forms of WOM in online
healthcare communities and investigate how patients educate themselves by using
other patients’ experiences. We find empirical evidence for the existence of
social contagion. More important, we find that experiential learning, a concept
describing substantive experience-based information seeking and sharing, is a
complex process and that, surprisingly, buzz effects outweigh similarity
effects in social interactions about medical information. We also examine the
opinion leadership concept and the managerial implications of these findings
are discussed." Read more
