다속성 효용이론을 활용한 중국시장에서의 인터넷 의료정보 서비스 선호속성 분석

An Analysis of Consumer Preferences for Internet Medical Information Service in China Using the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory

This study investigated consumer preferences for Internet medical information service in China using the multi-attribute utility theory. The multi-attribute utility theory is a compositional approach for modeling consumer preferences wherein researchers calculate the overall service utility by summing up the evaluation results for each attribute. We found that Chinese Internet medical information users consider the availability of information and quick response to be the most important attributes. Further, they think that the comment feature is less important as compared to other attributes such as costs and updates. In addition, we found that the Internet users having more Internet experience consider these attributes to be more important as compared to the people who are just beginning to surf the Internet. For any successful Internet business, Internet marketers should assess individual-level preference and accordingly organize a fresh campaign. As of now, Internet marketers need estimation methods to predict the market performance of new services in many different business environments. We believe that the multi-attribute utility theory is a useful approach in this regard.