Lydia L. Gan

Medical tourism facilitators: Patterns of service differentiation

This article studies the nature of differentiation in the market for medical tourism facilitators in the USA. Medical tourism facilitators in the USA resemble a monopolistically competitive industry. They choose to differentiate their services in several ways, including by the scope of countries and hospitals which they use, the scope of the treatments in which they specialize, the extent of involvement of medical professionals in the company, and the kinds of ancillary services they offer. The authors perform an exploratory study of the differentiation among 46 such firms. Using principal-components analysis, they detect three components: an emphasis on providing a broad selection of destinations, an emphasis on physician’s concerns, and an emphasis on the travel aspects of medical tourism. Cluster analysis separates the firms’ profiles into six types.

A comparative analysis of online grocery pricing in Singapore

Our study of the pricing strategies of the dot-bams (brick-and-mortars) and dot-coms of the grocery trade in Singapore differs from other empirical studies. Dot-coms were found to exhibit higher price dispersion than the dot-bams which can be explained by the different marketing strategies of the two types of retailers. We also found that dot-bams change their prices more frequently than the dot-coms, thus implying that online markets will not always have lower menu costs. Moreover, we found no statistically significant difference between the average price level of dot-bams and that of the dot-coms, suggesting that price convergence occurs due to reduced search costs among consumers and thus lower information asymmetries in the grocery market.

Medical Tourism in Singapore: A Structure-Conduct-Performance Analysis

This study presents a structure-conduct-performance analysis of the 17 Singaporean hospitals that are engaged in the medical tourism industry. Using data from hospital Websites, Singapores Ministry of Health and the Singapore Department of Statistics, it argues that barriers to entry give it the structure of an oligopolistic industry. However, because the industry is dominated by two publicly controlled hospital groups, the conduct and performance of the industry differ from those of the classical oligopoly model. The presence of two types of consumers, Western and Southeast Asian, also distinguishes this industry from the classical model. In the end, Singapores medical tourism hospitals appear to perform well in serving their international and domestic clients.

Medical Tourism: Consumers’ Concerns Over Risk and Social Challenges

ABSTRACT This paper studies factors that motivate an American’s decision to seek medical care outside the United States. Principal components analysis yielded three factors – risk, social-related, and vacation. We found that the middle-income earners and recipients of Medicare, the federal health insurance program for the elderly, are more motivated by risk-related factors to travel for care, but the middle-aged and older, and the married are more motivated by social-related factors to travel for care. Medical tourism has the potential to ease the strain on the healthcare systems of developed countries. How well it does this will depend on how policy makers address these factors.

A Study of Price Evolution in Online Toy Market

We study and contrast pricing and price evolution of online only (Dotcom) and online branch of multi-channel retailers (OBMCRs) based on two panel data sets collected from online toy markets. Panel data regression analyses reveal several interesting empirical results: over time, OBMCRs and Dotcoms charge similar prices on average but Dotcoms significantly increase their shipping costs that eventually drive the overall average price of Dotcoms higher than that of OBMCRs. Price dispersions of both types of retailers are persistent. The price dispersion of OBMCRs is higher than that of Dotcoms at the beginning and does not change much over time, but the price dispersion of Dotcoms increases significantly over time, indicating that the latter will eventually be higher than the former. Moreover, the OBMCRs charge significantly different prices, but the Dotcoms charge similar prices.

Monopoly Innovation and Welfare Effects

In this paper we study the welfare effect of a monopoly innovation. Unlike many partial equilibrium models carried out in previous studies, general equilibrium models are constructed and analyzed in greater detail. We discover that technical innovation carried out by a monopolist could significantly increase the social welfare. We conclude that, in general, the criticism against monopoly innovation based on its increased deadweight loss is less accurate than previously postulated by many studies.

The choice of facilitators in medical tourism

ABSTRACT The study identified which of the four facilitators (themselves, agents, insurers, or doctors) consumers are most likely to use when they travel for various medical procedures. A survey conducted between 2011 and 2014 yielded 964 responses. The multinomial logistic regression results showed that being 51–64 years old was positively related to going on their own or using agents to arrange for knee replacements. Having a high school education or less was positively linked to using both agents and insurers to facilitate knee replacements, whereas having a bachelor’s degree was negatively associated with going on their own for stem cell therapy.

Patterns of Service Differentiation Among Medical Tourism Facilitators

This paper studies the nature of differentiation in the market for medical tourism facilitators in the United States. Medical tourism facilitators in the United States resemble a monopolistically competitive industry. They choose to differentiate their services in several ways, including by the scope of countries and hospitals which they use, the scope of the treatments in which they specialize, the extent of involvement of medical professionals in the company, and the kinds of ancillary services they offer. The authors perform an exploratory study of the differentiation among 46 such firms. Using principal-components analysis, they detect three components: an emphasis on providing a broad selection of destinations, an emphasis on physicians concerns, and an emphasis on the travel aspects of medical tourism. Cluster analysis separates the firms’ profiles into six types.

A Study of Pricing Evolution in the Online Toy Market

We examine the pricing trends in the online toy markets by using panel data regression models with error components and serial correlation. Our results indicate that both online branch of multi-channel retailers (OBMCRS) and dotcoms charge similar prices on average, and that over time their prices move in tandem. Although the OBMCR retailers charge significantly different prices, the dotcoms do charge similar prices. Moreover, both retailer types demonstrate different magnitudes of price dispersion that move at different rates over time. Although the price dispersion of OBMCRS is higher than that of the dotcoms at the beginning, the gap narrows over time.

An Increase in Per Unit Cost: The Response from a Sales Maximizer and a Profit Maximizer

This paper investigates the decision making of firms with two different objectives – profit maximization and sales maximization, and compares their responses when encountering a higher per unit production cost or if per unit tax is imposed. The discussion in this paper is a follow up of Li and Yao [1], except in this case, a more comprehensive literature review is provided, and a very restricted result previously proposed has been substantially expanded to a few more general propositions.