Third-party Online Research Articles

Foot in both camps: How do activities on third-party online healthcare platforms affect doctors' demand on official online healthcare platforms?

Using empirical data from a third-party platform and a comprehensive public hospital (equipped with an official online healthcare platform) in China, this study employs a two-stage Heckman selection model and find that third-party online healthcare platforms (OHPs) should not be considered an obstacle to promoting official OHPs. Instead, doctors' activities on third-party OHPs increase the demand for doctors on official OHPs. Moreover, this study explores the heterogeneity in the effects of the doctor groups. For example, the impact of specific efforts is stronger for doctors with higher professional titles but weaker for doctors with higher online ratings. This study provides valuable insights for policymakers and hospital administrators to promote and coordinate online services across multiple platforms.

Investigating how brand image and attitude mediate consumer susceptibility to eWOM and purchase intention: Comparing enterprise-owned vs. third-party online review websites using multigroup analysis

Despite the well-recognized impact of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) on consumer decision-making, there is still a partial understanding of the differences integral to the platforms carrying eWOM. Underpinned by attitude contagion theory and attribution theory, the study investigates how brand attitude and brand image mediate the effect of consumer susceptibility to eWOM on purchase intention comparing the effects between enterprise-owned and third-party eWOM platforms. A self-administered online survey was conducted with 364 respondents and structural equation modelling was employed to test the relationships proposed in the study. The multigroup analysis performed using SmartPLS confirmed a significant difference between platforms. The results revealed that the indirect effect of susceptibility to eWOM on purchase intention, mediated by brand image and brand attitude, was stronger for third-party online review platforms compared to enterprise-owned platforms. This study extends the existing literature on eWOM platforms by empirically testing the different effects of two platforms on purchase intention, highlighting the critical role of third-party platforms in shaping consumer product and brand decisions. It accentuates the importance for enterprises to adapt strategies across review platforms due to varying consumer responses.

Availability of Alcohol on an Online Third-Party Delivery Platform Across London Boroughs, England: Exploratory Cross-Sectional Study.

Higher availability of alcohol is associated with higher levels of alcohol consumption and harm. Alcohol is increasingly accessible online, with rapid delivery often offered by a third-party driver. Remote delivery and online availability are important from a public health perspective, but to date, relatively little research has explored the availability of alcohol offered by online platforms. This cross-sectional exploratory study describes the availability of alcohol on the third-party platform Deliveroo within London, England. We extracted the number of outlets offering alcohol on Deliveroo for each London borough and converted these into crude rates per 1000 population (18-64 years). Outlets were grouped as outlets exclusively selling alcohol, off-licenses, and premium. We calculated Pearson correlation coefficients to explore the association between borough's crude rate of outlets per 1000 population and average Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) 2019 scores. We extracted the number of outlets also selling tobacco or e-cigarettes and used non-Deliveroo drivers. We searched addresses of the top 20 outlets delivering to the most boroughs by outlet type (60 total) to determine their associated premise. We identified 4277 total Deliveroo-based outlets offering alcohol across London, including outlets delivering in multiple boroughs. The crude rate of outlets per 1000 population aged 18-64 years was 0.73 and ranged from 0.22 to 2.29 per borough. Most outlets exclusively sold alcohol (3086/4277, 72.2%), followed by off-licenses (770/4277, 18.0%) and premium (421/4277, 9.8%). The majority of outlets exclusively selling alcohol sold tobacco or e-cigarettes (2951/3086, 95.6%) as did off-licenses to a lesser extent (588/770, 76.4%). Most outlets exclusively offering alcohol used drivers not employed by Deliveroo (2887/3086, 93.6%), and the inverse was true for premium outlets (50/421, 11.9%) and off-licenses (73/770, 9.5%). There were 1049 unique outlets, of which 396 (37.8%) were exclusively offering alcohol-these outlets tended to deliver across multiple boroughs unlike off-licenses and premium outlets. Of outlets with confirmed addresses, self-storage units were listed as the associated premise for 85% (17/20) of outlets exclusively offering alcohol, 11% (2/19) of off-licenses, and 12% (2/17) of premium outlets. We found no significant relationship between borough IMD scores and crude rate of outlets per 1000 population overall (P=.87) or by any outlet type: exclusively alcohol (P=.41), off-license (P=.58), and premium (P=.18). London-based Deliveroo outlets offering alcohol are common and are sometimes operating from self-storage units that have policies prohibiting alcohol storage. This and the potential for increased alcohol accessibility online have implications for public health given the relationship between alcohol's availability and consumption or harm. There is a need to ensure that regulations for delivery are adequate for protecting children and vulnerable adults. The Licensing Act 2003 may require modernization in the digital age. Future research must explore a relationship between online alcohol availability and deprivation.

Evaluation of Fast-Food Restaurant Kids’ Meal Beverage Offerings 1 Year After a State-Level Healthy Beverage Default Policy

Ordering from kids' menus and children's restaurant consumption is associated with greater purchasing and intake, respectively, of sugar-sweetened beverages. In response, policymakers have enacted strategies to improve the healthfulness of kids' meal offerings. This study investigated restaurant kids' meal beverage offerings and compliance with an Illinois healthy beverage default act, effective from January 1, 2022. Using a pre-post intervention (Illinois)-comparison (Wisconsin) site research design, fast-food restaurant audit data were collected before and 1 year after the Illinois Healthy Beverage Default Act from 6 platforms: restaurant interior and drive-thru menu boards and websites/applications and 3 third-party ordering platforms (DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub). Analyses included 62-110 restaurants across platforms. Difference-in-differences-weighted logistic regression models with robust SEs, clustered on restaurants, were estimated to assess pre to 1-year postpolicy changes in overall compliance for each audit setting in Illinois relative to that in Wisconsin. This study found no statistically significant (p<0.05) changes in the compliance of kids' meal beverage default offerings associated with the enactment of the Illinois Healthy Beverage Default Act in Illinois relative to that in Wisconsin at fast-food restaurants. There were some observed differences in results in the restaurants' physical locations versus online that are worth noting. That is, after the enactment of the Illinois Healthy Beverage Default Act, the results showed greater odds of fast-food restaurants exclusively offering healthy beverage defaults with kids' meals on restaurant interior (OR=1.83, 95% CI=0.93, 3.58) and drive-thru (OR=2.38, 95% CI=0.95, 5.96) menus, with weak statistical significance (p<0.10). However, the policy was not associated with either meaningful or statistically significant changes in healthy beverage default offerings on restaurant websites or third-party online ordering platforms. This study found limited evidence of changes in kids' meal beverage offerings attributable to the Illinois Healthy Beverage Default Act. Future investigations of communication channels that support awareness and implementation and the resources required for implementation and enforcement may provide insight that is key to improving compliance.

Impacts of bitcoin on monetary system: Is China's bitcoin ban necessary?

This paper examines the impacts of Bitcoin price growth (BPG) and Bitcoin volatility (BV) on China's monetary system indicated by inflation rates (INF), real exchange rates (RER) and money velocity (MV) based on the GARCH models using Bitcoin data from 2013 to 2019 to evaluate the necessity of China’s Bitcoin ban. The empirical results suggest that BPG has a significant negative impact on INF and MV, but is insignificant for RER. While the BV is insignificant for all three monetary aggregates. Consistent evidence is found from additional tests including the alternative model specifications, subperiod analysis and adding up third-party online payment as another control variable for money velocity. Our study focuses on the period without the sweeping ban of cryptocurrencies in China, which provides support for researchers and financial advisors when forecasting inflation or money velocity in other areas without legal-bans but having a relevantly crypto-skeptical attitude, and also for authorities in shaping and implementing relevant monetary policies.

Legal Risks and Solutions in the Context of Third-Party Online Payment

Legal Risks and Solutions in the Context of Third-Party Online Payment

Are Medical School Curricula Adapting With Their Students? A Survey on How Medical Students Study and How it Relates to USMLE Step 1 Scores.

Over the years, medical schools have evolved their curricula in response to the medical field, faculty, and students. The current study aims to examine how medical students study, what resources they most commonly use, and how it relates to United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 scores. A cross-sectional survey study of United States medical students was distributed via social media, GroupMe school chats, and school listservs from September 8, 2020, to December 12, 2020. The survey gathered data including, demographic and school information, resources students, time spent using each resource, and USMLE Step 1 scores. The survey was completed by 560 students from 102 different United States medical schools. Study guides as online resources (83.2%) were mostly used, lecture (82.5%), Anki (spaced repetition flashcards, 68.3%), and school-organized sessions (workshops, labs, and small groups) (60.7%). Of the students surveyed, 90% attended schools with a recorded lecture option. Only 54% of these students watched their lectures live. When watched online, the average watching speed was 1.75 ± 0.4× with a mode of 2× speed. In examining different medical school styles, schools with a 1.5-year preclinical curriculum had higher USMLE Step 1 scores (244.5 ± 15.6 vs 236.9 ± 16.2, P-score = .024) compared to schools that did not (1- or 2-year preclinical curriculum). Medical students seem to be using third-party resources in addition to their medical school curriculums. Because students are already broadly using these, medical schools could allow their curriculums to reference, require, or complement third-party online resources. Additionally, because of their increased cost, medical schools could consider ways to alleviate the cost on medical students as a means of equitable support. Lastly, Step 1 scores significantly correlated with schools with a 1.5-year preclinical curriculum, although the exact reasoning for this remains uncertain.

Pediatric Critical Care Illness Severity Toolkit: Stata Commands for Calculation of Pediatric Index of Mortality and Pediatric Logistic Organ Dysfunction Scores.

Illness severity scoring tools, such as PRISM III/IV, PIM-3, and PELOD-2, are widely used in pediatric critical care research. However, their application is hindered by complex calculation processes, privacy concerns with third-party online calculators, and challenges in accurate implementation within statistical packages. We have developed a comprehensive, open-source toolkit for implementing the PIM-3, Simplified PIM-3, and PELOD-2 scores. The toolkit includes the pim3 and pelod2 commands and is compatible with Stata versions 12 and above. It features robust data validation, error messaging, a graphical interface, and support for SI and Imperial units. The toolkit's accuracy was validated through unit testing and synthetic data, comparing results with existing implementations. In performance tests, the toolkit exhibited a median processing time of 21.82 seconds for PELOD-2, 14.06 seconds for PIM-3, and 9.74 seconds for Simplified PIM-3, when applied to datasets of 10,000,000 records. It consistently achieved 100% accuracy in both synthetic data tests and manual spot checks. The toolkit decreases processing time and improves accuracy in calculating pediatric critical care severity scores such as PELOD-2, PIM-3, and Simplified PIM-3. Its application in large datasets and validation highlights its utility as a tool for streamlining pediatric critical care research.

Research on Legal Issues of Consumer Rights and Interests Protection in Online Third-Party Payment

Research on Legal Issues of Consumer Rights and Interests Protection in Online Third-Party Payment

INTERMEDIARY’S LIABILITY: TOWARDS A SUSTAINABLE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE-BASED CONTENT MODERATION IN MALAYSIA

Intermediaries enjoy a ‘safe harbour’ from civil or criminal liability should they host illegal and harmful third-party online content, subject to requirements from national laws. The line between immunity and liability becomes hazy when intermediaries appear to assume the role of content creators, hence risk being characterised as publishers. The paper analyses whether such liability may be diminished if intermediaries adopt an artificial intelligence-based content moderation system. Through comparative case analyses of Mkini, Delfi, Bunt and Godfrey, the research questioned the relevance of the legal defence granted in the Communications and Multimedia Act 1998 and the Content Code. The article analysed the Federal Court’s finding of liability for Mkini and asked whether it signals the right way forward that may ignore the fundamental right to express opinion of public interest. Despite the advances in artificial intelligence-based content moderation, it remains to be seen if algorithms can easily contain illegal and harmful content.

Group Buying Pricing Strategies of O2O Restaurants in Meituan Considering Service Levels

After the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, the catering industry has returned to its previous thriving scene. Many restaurants have launched group buying services and collaborate with third-party online platforms to attract more customers. For the optimal decisions and maximum profits of restaurants and online platforms, a two-layer supply chain model is designed to investigate and study the price strategies and service strategies. Considering the service levels of restaurants and platforms, we construct the mathematical expressions of the offline retail model, online retail model, and online group buying model, respectively, and solve the game equilibrium. The results are shown as follows: (1) With cooperation between the restaurant and platform, both the restaurant and platform can obtain their maximum profits when they apply optimal pricing strategies. (2) The optimal pricing strategies of the restaurant are influenced by the sensitivity coefficients of customers to the restaurant and platform’s service levels, and the cost coefficients of the restaurant and platform’s service levels. (3) The maximum profit of the restaurant is directly proportional to the number of new potential consumers who are attracted. The more potential consumers who are attracted, the higher the profit the restaurant earns. The research results provide a reference for restaurants and platforms to formulate price strategies and service strategies, to help restaurants and platforms achieve more profits.

Between the Lines: An Exploration of Online Academic Help-Seeking and Outsourced Support in Higher Education: Who Seeks Help and Why?

The growth in online higher education has seen the ‘unbundling’ of some services as universities have partnered with private companies in an effort to enhance their services. This paper explores university students’ use and perceptions of the third-party online learning support platform, Studiosity, at Dublin City University. Studiosity was engaged to support undergraduate and postgraduate distance students, by offering support beyond existing campus-based services. This research employs a primarily inductive research design drawing on data collected through the third-party provider (2018–2020), supplemented by an in-house online survey (2019). Students were overwhelmingly positive about Studiosity. Postgraduate students, arguably students with good academic skills, used the service more than first-year undergraduate students. However, first-year undergraduates, a group the literature suggests are reluctant users of institutional support, were also strong users. Questions emanating from postgraduate students demonstrated expedient help-seeking. First-year undergraduate students were more concerned with explanations to help their understanding in order to persist with their studies. This paper posits that all other things being equal, those who already have strong academic capital will be the greatest users of academic support services. Proactive, less formal academic support strategies to encourage use by those who need help most, remain critical.

Impact of third-party online payment systems on trade, export, import, and internet retailing

&lt;p style="text-align: justify;"&gt;&lt;span style="font-family: 'times new roman', times, serif; font-size: 14pt;"&gt;This study estimates the impact of third-party online payment systems on trade, export, import, and Internet retailing in China. Also, the study examines the financial development mechanism via which third-party payment affects trade, export, import, and Internet retailing in China. By employing a sample of 31 provinces in China covering 2011 to 2018, the findings indicate that, third-party payment drives China&amp;rsquo;s trade (0.43%), export (0.42%), import (0.47%), and Internet retailing (0.24%). The study also finds that third-party payment complements financial development to positively affect trade, export, import, and Internet retailing in China. The study recommends policymakers promote third-party payment development in China to boost trade, export, import, and Internet retailing.&lt;/span&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Stop clicking around and book direct: Impact of best rate guarantee on hotel pricing

Hotel chains sell their rooms through both their own distribution channels and third-party online travel agencies (OTAs). However, with the growing popularity of OTAs over the last decade, major hotel chains have started to fight against OTAs for control and market share by offering Best Rate Guarantee (BRG) in an attempt to incentivize customers to bypass OTAs and book directly with the hotels. BRG ensures that guests who book direct will get the best price. We study a stylized model where a hotelier that works closely with an OTA offers BRG to its customers to maximize its revenue over a selling horizon. Motivated by common practices in the hotel industry, we model the hotelier-OTA decision making process as a sequential game. We focus on the case where there is a sufficient inventory, derive closed-form optimal solutions for the problem, prove some structural properties, and identify necessary and sufficient conditions under which offering BRG always benefits the hotel (resp. the OTA). While in general BRG makes the hotelier better off and the OTA worse off, we show that when the commission rate is high, BRG can make both channels better off. On the other hand, when the commission rate and the fraction of swing customers who claim BRG are both low, BRG can make both channels worse off. We also consider the case with a limited inventory in the appendix and derive various managerial insights regarding the impact of BRG through computational tests. Our findings will shed some lights for hotel managers when deciding whether to practice BRG and what relevant actions to take when BRG is practiced.

Alternative data and trade credit financing: Evidence from third-party online sales disclosure

This study examines the relationship between the introduction of alternative data and trade credit financing. Using the event of the public launch of firm online sales data in a well-known financial database in China, we show that firms obtain more trade credit from suppliers with the public disclosure of such alternative data. We extend the literature by shedding light on the important role of alternative data in capital markets to assess the operational transparency and credit risk of firms.

MUSTARD SNEAKERS: FINDING A MARKET

This case focuses on Mustard Sneakers, a design and boutique founded and co-owned by Nida Karnkorkul who has a background in design and a passion for simple, comfortable streetwear. The case describes Nida’s journey from conceiving the Mustard Sneakers brand, acquiring resources and strategic partnerships for the sneakers to be produced, distributed, and marketed mainly within Thailand; up to its established product offerings that had (1) expanded to tees; caps; socks; tote bags, (2) gained presence in third-party online retail platforms, and (3) were ordered by consumers within the Asia region by mid 2022. Coinciding with those company outcomes, the case also describes, in body text and in several exhibits, the nature of competition and recent demand of sneakers/athleisure footwear globally and in selected markets, particularly Thailand during the COVID19 pandemic. By May 2022, the Thailand government had announced its intentions to relax COVID19 restrictions and return to ‘normal’ effective 1 July 2022. As such, as indicated in the title, this case can be used to engage students in analyzing and discussing the growth/expansion opportunities that Nida can consider, which growth/expansion opportunities should be seized, and how a corresponding strategy and action plan could be implemented.

Does alternative data reduce stock price crash risk? Evidence from third-party online sales disclosure in China

This study empirically investigates the effect of releasing alternative data on firm-specific price crash risk. Using the public launch of a firm's third-party online sales data in a well-known Chinese financial database as an exogenous shock, we find that stock price crash risk significantly decreases with the disclosure of third-party online sales data. The results are robust to a series of endogeneity corrections and robustness checks. We also find that the reduction of stock price crash risk is due to the decrease in managers' bad news withholdings and the increase in the accuracy of market expectations. In addition, the negative association between third-party online sales disclosure and crash risk is more pronounced for firms with weaker external governance, higher earnings volatility, greater likelihood of sales manipulation, and lower book-to-market ratio. Our findings yield important implications for a comprehensive understanding of the information disclosure effect of online sales data in the capital market and the mechanisms to reduce stock price crash risk.

Online higher education: current landscape and future trends

ABSTRACT This critical review and perspective of the literature features the current landscape of online learning in higher education institutions (HEIs). The review starts by exploring the changing nature of student needs and staff and institutional roles in the face of online learning, and how digital transformation is shaping the culture and ways of learning. The aim is to better understand the challenges faced by higher education leaders to adopt online offerings and the factors affecting their decision-making. Emergence and fast evolution of third-party online programme management providers (OPMs) and forces which encourage or oppose their partnership with HEIs are critically discussed. The review also highlights the impact of COVID-19 emergency online learning on institutional practices and future adoption of online offerings.

Optimal channel strategy of luxury brands in the presence of online marketplace and copycats

The strategic interaction between authentic luxury brands and their copycats has evolved since the proliferation of online marketplaces. Using a game-theoretic framework, we examine how an authentic luxury brand, observing the strategic behavior of its competing copycats, should make its optimal entry decision to a third-party online marketplace. Our findings reveal that the authentic luxury brand does not sell on the online marketplace when either the quality or the physical resemblance of the copycat to the authentic luxury brand is high. This contributes to the related literature by offering an explanation for the increasing quality of copycats amid the e-commerce boom —improving the quality of the copycat can deter the authentic luxury brand from selling on the online marketplace. Furthermore, by comparing our equilibrium outcome with the benchmark case where the authentic luxury brand does not consider selling on the online marketplace at all, we show that the authentic luxury brand’s potential entry to the online marketplace is sufficient to induce the copycat to improve its quality and lower its price, thereby improving the aggregate consumer surplus. In addition, the online marketplace can always be better off allowing the entry of the copycat if there is no external enforcement against copycats. We show that our key results are valid in various extensions and they offer multiple managerial implications.

Accounting and analytical aspects of the formation of sales expenses of an economic entity

In the conditions of competition for sales markets, manufacturers of products, goods, works and services are trying to reach as many consumers as possible, bring the product to them as quickly as possible and ensure high efficiency of sales channels, while striving to reduce the cost of promotion and sale. The functions related to the organization of sales are performed by economic entities both independently and with the help of intermediary services — retail chains, regional distributors, wholesale dealers, third-party online stores, marketplaces, etc. Each of the selected sales options requires strict and accurate accounting, and is also subject to competent analysis and control of the facts of economic life associated with it. For the purposes of operational management decision-making, the most important task in this context is to create a unified sales information base with the possibility of in-depth detailing of analytical data on sales-related expenses. The subject of the study is the accounting and analytical aspects of the formation of sales expenses of an economic entity, depending on the choice of a sales option: through the creation of separate divisions, the conclusion of contracts with third-party distributors or retail chains.