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Linking platform governance and value, the article explains how platforms manage openness, which gives users access and authority, to shape the user experience and orchestrate interactive value co-creation within their ecosystem.

We adopted an abductive approach, drawing on an embedded multiple case study of platform-based local alternative food networks. The strong symbolic dimension embedded into that context allowed for a full exploration of value in its interactive nature.

Platform openness influences value creation directly, but also through two mechanisms: one behavioural, involving interactions between users and sides, and the other cognitive, involving users’ abstraction level. Value co-creation goes beyond the online space and occurs in complex sets of interactions between users. Digital platforms can thus generate intrinsic value co-creation that enhances their utility.

We have adopted a marketing channel theory reading of openness and mobilised a broader conception of value as well as cognitive science to explain how this key element of platform governance affects value creation.

The continuous impact of the pandemic and the downturn of the global economy have brought new challenges to the tourism industry. In this context, effectively attracting consumers and improving user stickiness are the top priorities of tourism platform companies. This study explores the impact of ethical concerns raised by new issues under the multi-governance environment on user stickiness. Based on the trust theory, the authors provide solutions for tourism platforms.

This study adopted a quantitative approach, gathering survey data via an online platform. A total of 400 participants were investigated, and 356 valid questionnaires were returned, with a recovery rate of 89%. Questionnaires that did not meet the inclusion criteria were excluded, leaving 298 valid responses.

Studies have found that consumers' ethical concerns about platform companies are key factors affecting user stickiness, and among these, consumer trust plays a mediating role. They have found that corporate social responsibility (CSR) behaviours help alleviate ethical concerns and improve trust in enterprises. At the same time, enterprises should properly control the number of platform collaborators, and excessive platform cooperation negatively moderates the impact of consumer ethical concerns on competence-based trust.

This study complements the deficiency of previous research with regard to ethical concerns in a multi-governance environment. These findings indicate that subject diversity exacerbates the negative impact of ethical concerns on consumer trust; however, CSR alleviates the impact of ethical concerns on consumer trust.

This chapter presents an analysis illustrating the evolution of information systems’ development based on three interdependent phases. In the first period, information systems were mainly considered as a strictly technical discipline. Information technology (IT) was used to automate manual processes; each application was treated as a separate entity with the overall objective of leveraging IT to increase productivity and efficiency, primarily in an organizational context. Secondly, the introduction of networking capabilities and personal computers (instead of fictitious terminals) has laid the foundations for a new and broader use of information technologies while paving the way for a transition from technology to its actual use. During the second phase, typical applications were intended to support professional work, while many systems became highly integrated. The most significant change introduced during the third era was the World Wide Web, which transcended the boundaries of the Internet and the conventional limits of IT use. Since then, applications have become an integral part of business strategies while creating new opportunities for alliances and collaborations. Across organizational and national boundaries, this step saw a transformation of IT in the background. These new ready-to-use applications are designed to help end-users in their daily activities. The end-user experience has become an essential design factor.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability affect their performance. Drawing on social capital theory, the authors examine platform network centrality as a mediator and platform reputation as a moderator of the relationships between these two capabilities and complementor performance.

This study collects data by questionnaire from 154 Chinese firms adopting e-commerce platforms. Hierarchical multiple regression is used to test the hypotheses of this study.

This study finds that complementors’ marketing capability and technology capability positively affect performance by increasing their platform network centrality. Moreover, platform reputation positively moderates the relationship between platform network centrality and complementor performance, and it strengthens the mediating role of platform network centrality.

This paper emphasizes the critical role of marketing capability and technology capability on complementor performance. It explores the improvement path of complementor performance from the perspective of network position, which is a key element for complementors to effectively leverage their capabilities to build competitive advantage.

Platform owners need to encourage yet control complementors in ways that generate benefits. Retaining too much control can restrict innovation and knowledge flows; giving up too much control can lead to poor quality and platform instability. Studies provide mixed findings that make it difficult to draw generalizable conclusions. We aim to provide a more accurate understanding of the link between platform control and platform benefits.

We conducted a meta-analysis of empirical research in this area.

Access-based control positively influences realization benefits, but it does not appear to affect creation benefits. Authority-based control does not appear to affect creation or realization benefits. Control is positively linked to benefits on transaction platforms but not on innovation platforms. Platform control is positively related to platform benefits in studies that use objective measures and in studies that measure control from the complementor’s perspective. However, the relationship between control and benefits is uncertain in studies that use perceptual measures and in studies that measure control from the owner’s perspective.

Tighter restrictions on who can join the platform can lead to greater use of platform innovations. Platform control is also an effective driver of benefits on transaction platforms. Researchers should carefully think through the manner in which they measure platform control and platform benefits. Our study is limited by a small sample size, four moderators and a set of empirical-only studies.

Our findings can guide future research and help practitioners better understand when platform control is related to platform benefits.

This study aims to understand how different levels of streamer channels influence luxury brand sales in live streaming commerce. This study also seeks to understand the conditions under which luxury brands may benefit more from different level streamer channels.

Panel data were collected from 17 international luxury brands on the Douyin live streaming platform in an 18 week period from August to December 2020 and analyzed by using a two-way fixed effects model.

The authors compared different mega-, macro- and micro-streamer channels within live streaming commerce and found that the densities of mega- and macro-streamer channels had significant positive impacts on luxury brand sales in live streaming commerce. Moreover, the effects of the density of streamer channel on luxury brand sales were moderated by such variables as product line breadth, product line depth, product type (star/non-star) and product price (high/low). The authors found that product line breadth and depth could reduce the positive impact of the densities of mega- and macro-streamer channels on luxury brand sales. For star products and high-priced products, the relationship between the density of mega-streamer channel and luxury brand sales was more likely to be observed than for non-star products and low-priced products. The relationship between the density of macro-streamer channel and luxury brand sales was more likely to be observed in low-priced products than in high-priced products.

The findings make important contributions to the literature in that the authors expand the influencer-brand fit theory by proposing a new model of effects of the densities of mega-, macro- and micro-streamer channels on sales performance across different luxury products to improve our understanding of the fit among influencers, brands and products. This helps luxury brands make basic decisions of “who sells” and “sells what” when engaging in live streaming commerce.

Pandemics are a serious challenge for humanity, as their social and economic impacts can be tremendous. This study aims to understand how innovation based in the sharing economy (SE) business models can contribute to overcoming the challenges arising from the Covid-19 pandemic.

Following a netnographic approach, the authors studied the computer-mediated social interactions of internet-based virtual innovation communities.

This study found that the SE business models contribute to overcome the challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic by redistributing idle resources to lessen the impacts of confinement. This was achieved through process innovations and an innovative use of the network, which enabled fast-open and decentralized innovation processes, and quick implementation of innovations. This innovation process is based on a decentralized decision-making approach, clear rules, informal relationship among community members and open communication channels, as well as in evasive strategies to avoid facing challenges, institutional restrictions and barriers in the adoption of innovations.

This study was limited to a virtual innovation community of highly specialized and educated experts and nine community projects focused on institutional contexts of a developed country. Future research should focus on the institutional contexts of less specialized communities and developing countries and study other community innovation projects in pandemics to understand the processes of fast-open, decentralized and evasive innovation and the importance of relational capabilities for innovation in digital contexts.

The findings can guide innovation managers and public policymakers in implementing effective strategies and policies to overcome pandemic challenges using SE business models. This research also provides important insights into the types and processes of innovation in organizations that create solutions to overcome social and business challenges during pandemics. In addition, this study highlights the contributions of netnographic approaches to conducting research on innovation and in pandemic periods when measures of confinement are in place.

This study uses an innovative framework to map the types of innovation and highlights two different types of innovation processes.

This paper aims to investigate how user expectations affect value-added service (VAS) investment and pricing decisions of two-sided platforms. It draws on the information asymmetry theory and offers suggestions on how platform operators can manage user expectations.

According to the game theory, this study considers three user expectations (responsive, passive and wary). By framing the Hotelling duopoly model and comparing the VAS investment, price and platform profits, the optimal platform decision is analyzed and discussed.

The conclusions demonstrate that the monopolistic two-sided platform obtains more profits from the informed users with responsive expectations than uninformed users with passive or wary expectations. The marginal investment cost and cross-network externalities are two key factors that determine the platform's VAS investment and pricing strategies of passive or wary users. Furthermore, considering the expectation preferences, i.e. the uniformed users hold wary expectations with more information and hold passive expectations with less or no information, the results suggest that the proportion of wary users to all uninformed users increases the platform's VAS investment, profits and the price of informed users, and increase (decrease) the price of uninformed users when the cross-network externalities of informed users are relatively small (larger).

These results can provide insightful enlightenment into how platform operators utilize bilateral users' expectations and information level to guide their VAS investment and pricing decisions.

This paper is one of the first to explore the impact of three user expectations and the heterogeneity of preferences in informing users' passive or wary expectations, based on different levels of information on the decision-making of two-sided platforms regarding VAS.

The paper aims to resolve three major issues in location-based applications (LBA) known as heterogeneity, user privacy, and context-awareness by proposing an elastic and open design platform named OpenLS privacy-aware middleware (OPM) for LBA.

The paper analyzes relevant approaches ranging from both academia and mobile industry community and insists the importance of heterogeneity, user privacy, and context-awareness towards the development of LBA.

The paper proposes the OPM by design. As a result, the OPM consists of two main component named application middleware and location middleware, which are cooperatively functioned to achieve the above goals. In addition, the paper has given the implementation of the OPM as well as its experiments. It is noted that two privacy-preserving techniques at two different levels are integrated into the OPM, including Memorizing algorithm at the application level and Bob-tree at the database level. Last but not least, the paper shows further discussion about other problems and improvements that might be needed for the OPM.

Each issue has its sub problems that cause more influences to the OPM. Besides, each of the issues requires more investigations in depth in order to have better solutions in detail. Therefore, more overall experiments should be conducted to assure the OPM's scalability and effectiveness.

The paper hopefully promotes and speeds up the development of LBA when providing the OPM with suitable application programming interfaces and conforming the OpenLS standard.

This paper shows its originality towards location-based service (LBS) providers to develop their applications and proposes the OPM as a unified solution dealing with heterogeneity, user privacy, and context-awareness in the world of LBS.