Price Decision-Making in Dual-Channel Healthcare Services Supply Chain Considering the Channel Acceptance, Price Ceiling, and Public Welfare

Yanbo Ma, Zheng Li, Kaiyue Liu and Zhengmin Liu ()
Additional contact information
Yanbo Ma: School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China
Zheng Li: School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China
Kaiyue Liu: School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China
Zhengmin Liu: School of Management Science and Engineering, Shandong University of Finance and Economics, Jinan 250014, China

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 20, 1-23

Abstract: Given that an increasing number of online healthcare channels play an essential role as a supply method in the healthcare service supply chain (HSSC), this paper studies the price decision-making problem for a dual-channel HSSC considering the channel acceptance, price ceiling, and public welfare. In this HSSC, a healthcare institution establishes both a traditional offline channel and an online channel to provide healthcare services for some health conditions. Considering the public welfare of healthcare institutions, we employ a sum formula of economic revenue and patient surplus to describe the total revenue of both healthcare service channels. Based on the Stackelberg game, we develop a decentralized supply chain model to maximize supply chain members’ revenue. By employing the K a r u s h – K u h n – T u c k e r optimality condition, we derive an analytical expression for the optimal service price, which includes the functions of the public welfare coefficient and channel acceptance. Finally, we conduct extensive numerical analyses under various system parameters to verify the optimal price decision-making strategies. Our analytical results indicate that: (1) the healthcare service price is closely related to the patients’ channel acceptance, the public welfare coefficient, and the government price ceiling policy; (2) the public welfare coefficient strongly influences the service price and total revenue, and its increase can decrease the economic revenue of the HSSC; (3) the acceptance of online channels is an essential factor that should be carefully considered in the construction of a dual-channel HSSC. Improving patient acceptance of online channels is conducive to developing and improving a sustainable dual-channel HSSC.

Keywords: healthcare services; dual-channel; price decision-making; price ceiling; Stackelberg game; public welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13028/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/20/13028/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:19:y:2022:i:20:p:13028-:d:938829

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().