First-Party Komplemente in Plattformmärkten: eine dynamische Perspektive
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
Platform markets are increasingly relevant in our economy. For example, seven out of the ten most valuable companies by market value are owners of one or more prominent platforms. In platform markets, an intermediary, the platform, usually connects two sides of agents, buyers and sellers of complementary goods (complementors). One feature of platform markets is that both buyers and sellers make their decisions independently of the platform owner, i.e. the sellers are not under the direct control of the platform owner. Traditional examples of platform markets include credit cards, which facilitate transactions between customers and merchants, or video game consoles, which allow players to play video games. Recently, new digital platforms have emerged, such as online marketplaces, social and professional networks, digital payment systems, streaming services and many others. In this project, we studied a crucial feature of platform markets: Platform owners often choose to produce complements as well. This creates a dilemma: If the platform provides complements, does it open a further revenue stream and contribute to the success of the platform ecosystem, or will it create formidable competition to the independent (third-party) complementors and deter entry of and/or investment into high-quality complements by independent suppliers? This tradeoff is part of a larger question we aimed to address in this proposal: What is the relation between first- and third-party complements and how does this influence platform strategies? We pursued four subprojects: First, we theoretically modeled the incentives of a platform owner to provide complements itself or to rely on independent complementors either partially or fully. We find that if the key resource for the platform is highly scalable and valuable even for providing complements, the platform may prefer to focus on the main service and leave all complement provision to external (less efficient) complementors. This explains some features of modern digital firms, specifically their large size and concurrent high specialization. Second, we empirically studied the video gaming industry, one of the industries in which platforms provide the platform itself as well as its own complements. We find that platforms use first-party complements to improve their competitive position vis-à-vis competing platforms by propping up market segments in which their platform is weak, either because there are few complements or because the existing ones are relatively low quality. Conversely, platform owners use firstparty complements in market niches with a large number of users to generate revenues for the platform. The third study emerged following the observation that the implementation of the GDPR led to a relative decrease in the attractiveness of third-party data trackers for websites in Europe and (partly) outside Europe. We found that as a result of the GDPR, websites used overall fewer data trackers, relatively more trackers by Google (the largest provider of tracking services), and likely more first-party trackers. The final (conceptual) study places the use of first-party complements into the broader realm of competitive platform strategies and discusses how first-party complements and other strategic choices by platform owners can affect competition with incumbent (non-platform) services, between platforms, and between platform owner and its complementors. The article also establishes the conceptual lens of platforms as meta-organizations, i.e. organizations consisting of other, independent organizations.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
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Platform ecosystems as meta‐organizations: Implications for platform strategies. Strategic Management Journal, 43(3), 405-424.
Kretschmer, Tobias; Leiponen, Aija; Schilling, Melissa & Vasudeva, Gurneeta
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Hyperspecialization and hyperscaling: A resource‐based theory of the digital firm. Strategic Management Journal, 44(6), 1391-1424.
Giustiziero, Gianluigi; Kretschmer, Tobias; Somaya, Deepak & Wu, Brian
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Regulatory Spillovers and Data Governance: Evidence from the GDPR. Marketing Science, 41(4), 746-768.
Peukert, Christian; Bechtold, Stefan; Batikas, Michail & Kretschmer, Tobias
