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This study develops an empirical framework to address how large third-party sellers (TPSs) can apply customer acquisition strategies to improve their performance in consumers’ person-goods matching process and how the platform firm’s similar strategies moderate the effects of TPSs’ strategies.

Using data collected from the top ten TPSs from a Chinese e-commerce platform, the fixed effect model is used to validate the conceptual model and hypotheses.

The study results show that both market detection strategy and matching optimization strategy can help large TPSs improve their sales performance. Moreover, the similar market detection strategy applied by the platform firm weakens the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies, while the similar matching optimization strategy applied by the platform firm strengthens the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies.

This study provides firsthand evidence on the performance of large TPSs’ and the platform firm’s strategies. It demonstrates the effectiveness of large TPSs’ market detection strategy and matching optimization strategy, which can be adopted to meet consumers’ search and evaluation motivations in their person-goods matching process respectively. Moreover, it identifies the role of platform firms by showing the moderating effect of similar strategies adopted by the platform firm on the effect of large TPSs’ customer acquisition strategies.

The article examines four strategies for creating competitive advantage in markets enabled by digital platforms.

The four strategies are assessed: 10; Strategy 1: The Digital Industrialist - hardware-data-experience. 10;Strategy 2: The Digital Consumer - experience-data-platform-hardware. 10;Strategy 3: The Data Acquirer - buy data (D). 10;Strategy 4: The Platform over Platform (PoP).

By offering their customers even more compelling and unique cross-platform experiences, platform over platform entrants can create new mega-platform environments, overarching existing, otherwise successful platform environments.

By expanding and deepening their customers’ engagement, platform over platform businesses might ultimately relegate some existing platforms to digital infrastructure – providing the pipes and plumbing for customers empowered to jump seamlessly across and between platforms with the support and encouragement of their platform over platform orchestrators.

Extant literature in Video on Demand (VoD) has taken the consumer perspective; however, the stakeholder perspective is largely neglected. This paper aims to fill this gap by understanding the strategies to enhance the experience and engage customers from the supplier’s point of view. The purpose of the study is to identify and analyse strategies adopted by over-the-top (OTT) platforms that ensure consumer loyalty in the VoD space.

Using a qualitative approach and inductive qualitative design, the authors interviewed 16 industry experts associated with OTT platforms in India and people handling various marketing-related positions. Data collected included topics related to industry landscape, the value created for a customer, consumer experience, engagement and platform stickiness. Thematic analysis was used to find meaningful semantic elements.

This study has found that consumer experience, content differentiation, consumer sense-making and engagement and platform extension as value enhancers as the key strategies been adopted in the Indian context, thereby leading to a platform’s stickiness.

This research offers insights to policymakers of content, digital platforms, media practitioners and managers that are drawing consumers influenced by platform strategies.

This research provides insights to content policy makers, digital platform leaders, media practitioners, and managers who are influencing consumers through platform strategies.

The research could help entrepreneurs and marketers understand the perspectives of stakeholders in the VoD industry in India.

The study encourages researchers to explore the concept of stickiness, which may or may not be equivalent to loyalty. It is important to focus on quality, frequency, and regular reminders to help customers return to the same platform in the short term.

The paper analyses the implications of a platform strategy in new product development with reference to the automobile industry. The implications and benefits of a platform strategy are discussed from both the technical and organisational points of view. The impact of a platform strategy on international product development is then analysed. The paper draws on examples from the experience of major Japanese automobile companies. In general, the analysis highlights how platform strategies are evolving and how they must be recognised more and more in relation to the internationalisation processes of R&D activities and operations. Moreover, different approaches are pointed out concerning more advanced and/or conservative approaches to platform development. A more advanced approach leads to more benefits in terms of the performance of the product development process and the reorganisation of the development process on a global level.

Platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies embrace and enable interactions with external entities. Firms pursuing these approaches conduct business and interact with environments differently than those pursuing traditional closed strategies. This chapter considers these strategies together highlighting similarities and differences between platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies. We focus on managerial and organizational challenges for organizations pursuing these strategies and identify four institutional logic shifts associated with these strategic transitions: (1) increasing external focus, (2) moving to greater openness, (3) focusing on enabling interactions, and (4) adopting interaction-centric metrics. As mature incumbent organizations adopt these strategies, there may be tensions and multiple conflicting institutional logics. Additionally, we consider four strategic leadership topics and how they relate to platform, open/user innovation, and ecosystem strategies: (1) executive orientation and experience, (2) top management teams, (3) board-management relations, and (4) executive compensation. We discuss theoretical implications, and consider future directions and research opportunities.

For two-sided platforms, the utility of users on one side of the platform depends in part on the number of users on the other side of the platform, a phenomenon called indirect network externalities. With the rapid development of two-sided platform and the popularity of platform membership, more and more two-sided platforms have launched joint membership through horizontal cooperation in order to take advantage of indirect network externalities to increase platform profits.

Our study explores the optimal bundling strategy for platform memberships under horizontal cooperation considering indirect network externalities. The main purpose of our study is to obtain the optimal pricing under different strategies (pure component, pure bundling, and mixed bundling) and contrast different strategies under different indirect network externalities.

Results suggest that the platform's optimal pricing for consumers and sellers depends on the indirect network externalities. Interestingly, the higher the indirect network externalities from consumers, the higher the price of the platform charges to sellers, and the platform might even subsidize sellers. Besides, when there are equal proportions of different types of consumers in the market, indirect network externalities that are too high, too low, or heavily lopsided may discourage the platforms from bundling their memberships. When the composition of consumers changes, the optimal strategy will also change. Our results can be employed in practical applications of bundling, which can help the platform increase profits.

Sharing economy-based service platforms are a relatively new way of delivering services that have received increasing attention from both practitioners and researchers. However, current research in the area is still developing in terms of offering practical insight in conjunction with a decision model that may help to determine optimal strategies for efficient service design in the sharing economy from a service triad perspective. Exploring this gap in the literature, this paper aims to develop and apply a decision model that enables managers to identify and prioritise the efficiency attributes of sharing economy-based services. It also aids in designing optimal strategies to enhance efficiency over time based on the insights obtained from users (buyers and sellers) and platform providers.

This study adopts a mixed-methods approach. The qualitative approach comprised an extensive literature review followed by in-depth interviews, and the quantitative approach adopted the quality function deployment (QFD) integrated optimisation technique to design and prioritise the most optimal strategy emanating from the application of a decision model.

The findings revealed that establishing global distribution, continued technological research and development (R&D) and enhancing the transactional platform are the most important strategies in the context of sharing economy platform providers (e.g. accommodation-based-platform service providers). This study also revealed that as the importance weights of the efficiency attributes changed over time, so too did the portfolio of strategies used to attain an optimal efficiency level.

The decision model brings a richer conceptual understanding of the dynamic changes over time that occur in the business ecosystem. It also allows managers of sharing economy-based platforms to select optimal strategies and make astute decisions towards achieving efficient service design.

Over the past years – because of the huge impact of companies such as Airbnb and Uber – the concept of the platform became extremely popular in the business world. Still, the concept of the platform has been evolving for a long time in the management field, from internal platforms (like the famous case of Sony Walkman) to industry-wide platforms (like the case of computers with external software developers), up to transaction and two or multi-sided platforms (such as Airbnb and all the companies with a similar business model). Platforms are often considered disruptors in several industries, from accommodations to mobility to entertainment. Still, the disruptors in the creative world usually deal with the way in which they distribute content (Netflix or Spotify), rather than with the content itself. The purpose of this paper is to understand if and how platforms trategies can also be used in the creative industries.

This paper digs into the movie industry, studying the three most successful Superheroes sagas of the past two decades as follows: the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), DC Comics and X-Men using a narrative approach. The three sagas are studied through network analysis to understand their “platform approach”.

The results show how platform strategies are relevant also in creative industries – defining the concept of “knowledge platform strategy” – and how they have a significant impact in terms of market performance. The MCU builds on a common knowledge through the various movies that enable the chance to rely on many of the platforms’ characteristics emerging from the literature.

This research extends the concept of “platforms,” relying on the three kinds of platform defined in the managerial literature and introducing the “knowledge platform strategy” for creative industries. The main contribution is related to the extension of platforms in research fields where it has not been exploited. This opens up avenues for research both from a knowledge platform and creative industries perspectives.

Managers, working not only in creative industries but also in industries where a common knowledge basis may be leveraged to develop new products over time, may use the concept of “knowledge platform strategy” to rethink the new development process or knowledge management from a customer perspective.

This study explores a mature and relevant concept – the platforms – in a new filed, the creative industries using the case of Superheroes sagas, proposing a new perspective to explain the success of MCU while proposing a new platform strategy.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the pricing strategies for knowledge payment products, taking into account the quality level of pirated knowledge products, in the context of platform copyright supervision.

This study abstracts the knowledge payment transaction process and aims to maximize producer's revenue by constructing a pricing model for knowledge payment products. It discusses pricing strategies for knowledge payment products under two scenarios: traditional supervision and blockchain supervision. The analysis explores the impact of pirated knowledge products quality level and blockchain technology on pricing strategies and consumer surplus, while providing threshold conditions for effective strategies.

Deploying blockchain technology in platform operations can significantly reduce costs and increase efficiency. In both scenarios, knowledge producer needs to balance factors such as the quality of pirated knowledge products, the supervision level of platform, and consumer surplus to dynamically adjust pricing strategies in order to maximize his own revenue.

This study enriches the literature on the pricing models of knowledge payment products and has practical significance in guiding knowledge producer to develop effective pricing strategies under copyright supervision.

This paper aims to first, identify the external and internal factors that a company needs to analyze when formulating its digital platform strategy. Based on the framework of PESTNPG (political economic social and culture technological population and globalization) and internal analysis a company should analyze both internal and external factors to formulate its digital platform strategy. For companies from emerging markets the institutional-based market created by national or local governments is important for digital platform strategy. Second dynamic capability theory and its linkages to digital platform strategy. The dynamic capabilities view is considered as a primary theoretical lens in the strategy literature to analyze a company’s strategies to achieve sustainable competitive advantages. To carry out a successful digital platform strategy companies need to build strong dynamic capabilities to capture or create opportunities and reconfigure their resources simultaneously. Third the advantages and disadvantages of different digital platform strategies (i.e. an independent digital platform and online–offline integration platform) and the possible consequences and risks of different strategies. It is important to evaluate different types of digital platform strategies that require different capabilities in terms of business structure product structure revenue structure organizational structure and technology architecture. A company needs to link these capabilities to a digital platform strategy to enable the integration (or separation) of online business with offline business. It also increases the accuracy and efficiency of online business. Fourth key points of digital platform strategy implementation. Companies need to identify key profit models for their digital platform to promote business growth and financial returns. It is equally important to increase customer value by leveraging its digital exhibition platform and to learn to use digital technology to foster organizational dematerialization.

Zhejiang Meorient Commerce & Exhibition Inc. (hereinafter referred to as “Meorient”) was a leading company in the exhibition industry in China. The unexpected outbreak of COVID-19 plunged Meorient into a state of emergency that forced it to fight for survival. Further, China had launched a national strategy of Digital China, which created new market opportunities for Meorient. As a result, Meorient gradually developed and launched its digital exhibition services in 2015. Meorient suffered significant losses in 2020 due to COVID-19 and had to formulate a new strategy based on a digital exhibition platform in 2021. Chairman Pan Jianjun had two options. One was a purely digital platform strategy without the original offline exhibition business. The other one was an online and offline integration strategy. Which option was the best way forward for Meorient? Pan had to make a choice. Some of the top management team members believed Meorient should completely transform into a digital platform company and provide comprehensive online digital exhibition services. Over the previous 20 years, Meorient had accumulated a large amount of data from domestic and foreign exhibitors and professional buyers and had gradually developed a digital exhibition platform. It was one of the companies that pioneered digital transformation within China’s exhibition industry. More conservative thinking held that Meorient's strategy should focus more narrowly on the integration of online and offline exhibition businesses. Toward the post-pandemic era, China’s national strategy of “Digital China” accelerated the development of digital infrastructures. During such critical transitional period, Meorient had to choose wisely if it was to sustain its profits or even survive.

The case is aimed at students in undergraduate, MBA, short course executive, EMBA or other executive education programs, especially where digital transformation is featured subject matter.

Teaching notes are available for educators only.

CSS 11: Strategy