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Reputation systems have been an important component for improvement of online markets' efficiency by reducing uncertainty about the quality of the sellers. Most, if not all, reputation systems examined in the extant literature reflect the sellers' long-term accumulative reputation, which has several drawbacks that impede accomplishing the intended goals of the reputation systems. Taobao.com, the largest consumer-to-consumer online market in China, implemented the Gold Medal Seller (GMS) program as a concurrent reputation mechanism to enhance its existing long-term accumulative reputation system. The GMS program presents a backdrop that allows us to address several intriguing research issues not empirically examined in prior literature. By adopting multiple causal identification strategies, we find that earning a reputation badge has a positive impact on sales, and losing a reputation badge has a negative impact on sales. More importantly, the signaling value of obtaining/losing a reputation badge is asymmetric: The magnitude of the effect of losing a reputation badge is four times larger than that of earning a badge. Moreover, consecutively keeping a reputation badge or earning it multiple times is a stronger signal for seller quality and has a larger positive impact on sales, which suggests that the marginal value of reputation badges increases. Our findings offer a new and deeper understanding of the reputation system mechanism design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online healthcare portals have become prevalent worldwide in recent years. One common form of healthcare portal is the online consultation website, which provides a bridge between patients and doctors and reduces patients' time and cost when seeking healthcare services. Another form is the healthcare service appointment website, which facilitates offline visits for patients. Though nominally separate, the behaviors of the users (including patients and doctors) on these two types of websites could be related to each other. In particular, how does opening online consultation services impact the offline appointments of doctors? Although this is an important question for healthcare portals, doctors, and policy makers, it has not been rigorously examined in the literature. We examine the overall impact of opening online consultation services on offline appointments and show that the number of offline appointments for doctors increases after opening online consultation services. Given that online consultation is a new but important way to connect patients and doctors, our findings provide useful implications for all the stakeholders—doctors, patients, hospitals, and policy makers—regarding how to integrate online and offline channels in the healthcare context. Online healthcare portals have become prevalent worldwide in recent years. One common form of a healthcare portal is the online consultation website, which provides a bridge between patients and doctors and reduces patients' time and cost when seeking healthcare services. Another form is the healthcare service appointment website, which facilitates offline visits for patients. Although nominally separate, the behaviors of the users (including patients and doctors) on these two types of websites could be related to each other. In particular, how does opening online consultation services impact the offline appointments of doctors? Although this is an important question for healthcare portals, doctors, and policy makers, it has not been rigorously examined in the literature. In this paper, we attempt to bridge this important gap by examining the overall impact of offering online consultations on offline appointments. Our results show that the number of offline appointments for doctors increases after opening an online consultation service. Additionally, we examine how several factors, such as recommendation heat, hospital ranking, and doctor title, moderate the impact of opening online consultation services on doctors' offline appointments. Given that online consultation is a new but important way to connect patients and doctors, our findings provide useful implications for all the stakeholders—doctors, patients, hospitals, and policy makers—regarding how to integrate online and offline channels in the healthcare context. History: Param Singh, Senior Editor; Yuliang (Oliver) Yao, Associate Editor. Funding: This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [Grants 72071057, 71922009, 71871080, and 72188101]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2022.1145. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]