What is it about?

In the traditional offline context, the mental health industry suffers from poor local demand and a lack of trustworthy supply. Emerging digital platforms can solve this problem to a large extent by building network effects. How to build network effects is a primary issue for mental health platforms. This article explores this problem by investigating two cases from China. Platform firms can design mechanisms to increase user scale, multiply user roles, facilitate user engagement, and enhance user trust on platforms. The pioneer platform and the later entrant can implement different strategies for building network effects.

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------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Academic Scholarship ------------------------------------------------------- The magnitude or strength of network effects can be endogenously determined by platform firms’ mechanisms acting on platform users. In the process of building network effects, platform firms should have a systematic view of positions, products or services offered, and mechanisms designed. ------------------------------------------------------- Contribution to Management Practice ------------------------------------------------------- In the traditional offline context, the mental health industry suffers from poor local demand and a lack of trustworthy supply. Emerging digital platforms can solve this problem to a large extent by building network effects. The pioneer platform and the later entrant can implement different strategies for building network effects. ---------------------------- Author Perspective ---------------------------- "Extant literature studies what are network effects, why they matter and how they work. This paper explores how a firm builds network effects on a hybrid platform in the health industry. Specifically, we explore how online platforms design mechanisms in products and services to improve network size, structure and trust."

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This page is a summary of: How to Build Network Effects on Online Platforms for Mental Health, California Management Review, July 2022, SAGE Publications,
DOI: 10.1177/00081256221107421.
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