Does Free Consultation Promotion Affect Paid Consultations? An Empirical Investigation of Online Medical Consultations

Recently, online healthcare platforms have started offering free consultation services for patients and have launched promotions to encourage physicians to engage in free consultations. However, it is unclear whether and how these promotions may spill over and affect paid consultations, which is the primary form of OMCs and the major profit for OHPs. We fill this gap and provide practical suggestions by studying the spillover effect of platform-initiated promotion of free consultations on subsequent paid consultations. Exploiting an OHP-initiated event, we draw causal inferences by adopting a staggered difference-in-difference approach combined with matching techniques. We find that the free-consultation promotion has a positive spillover effect on the volume of subsequent paid consultations. Our mechanism analyses suggest that this result may stem from patient-side changes through two pathways: a direct freemium effect and an indirect, mediating awareness effect. Our findings provide all stakeholders with a deeper understanding of the impact of free consultations on OHPs and insights into promoting such services.