Featured Faculty

Li, Hongfei

Assistant Professor

Research Paper

The impact of process versus outcome-oriented reviews on the sales of healthcare services

Do patients care more about process or results?

20 November 2025 • 5 mins read

When deciding on a medical procedure, which aspects of online reviews most influence your choice?

Featured faculty: Li Hongfei
Written by Pan Jingyi

We are living in an age of digital solutions. Customers nowadays conveniently turn to their gadgets seeking answers to almost anything, including health and wellness issues. From finding clinics for specific health problems to advanced beauty treatments, people search for guidance online, and user-generated reviews often play a big role in influencing their decision.

Hence, healthcare and medical platforms often feature reviews from their patients to showcase their sophisticated services and procedures. Patients can also share their experiences on their social media or other digital channels. Unlike hotel or restaurant ratings, the most helpful reviews for medical procedures aren’t necessarily the ones that are the most enthusiastic, but those that provide honest accounts of the process and outcomes.

“There are millions of online reviews and blog posts about medical treatments. Since ordinary people have no clue how to evaluate the quality or safety of medical treatments, patient testimonials fill this information gap,” says Li Hongfei, Assistant Professor at the Department of Decisions, Operations and Technology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School.

“Service providers need to identify which types of reviews offer the most value for prospective customers to guide meaningful improvements in their service delivery and targeted marketing strategies.”

“Service providers need to identify which types of reviews offer the most value for prospective customers to guide meaningful improvements in their service delivery and targeted marketing strategies.”

Professor Li Hongfei

Professor Li’s recent study, The impact of process versus outcome-oriented reviews on the sales of healthcare services, finds that reviews for healthcare services generally focus on the process and outcome. Process-focused review describes the medical journey and recovery, and outcome-based review emphasises the results after the treatment.

From the potential customer’s point of view, when deciding whether to use a healthcare service, people typically weigh between its feasibility and desirability. Feasibility refers to how easy or doable the procedure is, and desirability refers to how much the patient wants the final result after the procedure. “Reviews that focus on the process help customers understand the feasibility, while reviews that focus on the outcome highlight the desirability of the procedure,” Professor Li adds.

Feasibility vs. desirability in medical service

Professor Li and his collaborators, Peng Jing at the University of Connecticut, Wang Gang at the University of Delaware, and Bai Xue at Temple University, collected and analysed more than 110,000 reviews from one of the largest online platforms for cosmetic procedures in Chinese Mainland.

Cosmetic procedures provide an ideal context to examine the dynamics of process and outcome, given their complex treatments with highly visible recovery processes. Customers also have more varied perceptions on the desirability and feasibility of plastic surgery compared to other medical procedures.

Their findings are intriguing. The researchers find that reviews highlighting outcomes have a stronger impact on booking rates for less complex medical procedures. Take a simple treatment like Botox injection for facial wrinkles, for example. The appealing outcomes are powerful enough to influence the customer’s decision.

However, when a procedure is more intricate and invasive, such as the rhinoplasty surgery to change the shape of one’s nose, the study reveals a dramatic shift. Process-oriented reviews become overwhelmingly important to influence potential customers in making a decision.

“Imagining the detailed process helps people reduce their concerns about the feasibility, that the procedure will work for them and encourages them to sign up,” Professor Li adds. “Highlighting the process can also enhance the testimonial’s credibility by providing detailed evidence of the recovery journey.”

The researchers further find that popularity and complexity also play a significant role. A popular treatment means it is widely adopted and valued, indicating its feasibility and desirability. Potential customers are more assured about the process and shift their focus to the outcomes. As a result, outcome-based reviews exert a stronger influence on popular treatments.

For complex procedures, however, the primary concern shifts to feasibility. Although the end goal is a desired outcome, potential customers first need to be confident that the procedure is safe and feasible. In these cases, process-oriented reviews are more critical to ease concerns about the process itself and mitigate perceived risks.

The more complex the procedure, the more it requires process-oriented reviews to persuade potential customers. “Customers anticipate a long process of recovery for complex procedures, and truthful reviews focusing on such a process help them feel more prepared,” says Professor Li. “Even if the complex procedure is popular, knowing the details of how it works is important to them.”

For less popular treatments, process-oriented reviews have a stronger influence since customers are more sceptical about feasibility and need detailed information to feel assured.

Making the best use of online reviews

Although the study was done on cosmetic procedures as a specific type of medical treatment, Professor Li believes that the findings and theoretical insights have broader implications for general healthcare services.

Moving beyond a one-size-fits-all approach, he recommends that healthcare platforms identify whether a procedure is complex or simple and highlight the most relevant and useful reviews that resonate with target customers. Leveraging process-oriented reviews into visual recovery timelines can also further exemplify the anticipated arduous procedures.

On the other hand, service providers can encourage customers to write the types of reviews, whether process-based or outcome-based, that best fit the nature of each procedure. “This tailored review management strategy can enhance the effectiveness of user-generated content,” says Professor Li.

Insurance: an effective tool to encourage demand for online professional services?

He also suggests the importance of balancing feasibility and desirability factors beyond the healthcare industry to fields like fitness and education, where success often depends on a lengthy process, strenuous exercise, and where reviews from others influence decision-making before an individual invests time and money.

“Service providers should not only emphasise the appeal of desirable outcomes but also thoughtfully integrate the pragmatic and procedural details into their marketing materials,” he adds.