Optimal Retailing mode for Content Platforms\u27 E-commerce

In recent years, content platforms have expanded their operations into e-commerce by leveraging short videos or live-streaming and collecting commissions. This paper examines the optimal operational modes that content platforms should adopt when launching e-commerce businesses. Specifically, we analyze the content platforms’ choices between building a joint channel with e-commerce platforms (joint mode), building a self-operated channel independently (self-operated mode), or operating both channels simultaneously (dual-channel mode). Using a game-theoretic model, we find that the content platform tends to choose the self-operated mode (or joint mode) when all sellers have high (or low) conversion ability, and the dual-channel mode when sellers have differentiated conversion abilities. Additionally, our analysis shows that the content platform\u27s mode selection switches from joint mode to dual-channel mode and to self-operated mode with a decrease in e-commerce platform\u27s commission rate or a weaker spillover effect from the content platform to the e-commerce platform

Re-strategizing Product-related Decisions in Response to Platform Owner’s Entry

By offering products on self-owned platform marketplace, platform owner enters complementary market and poses competition that would trigger complementors to revise their product portfolio. Building on past works, we distinguish between three product-related decisions: new product launch, product variety and product differentiation. Using two-year data from Amazon.com, we empirically test how complementors re-strategize product-related decisions in response to platform owner’s entry. We find that complementors decrease new product launch, and revise their product portfolio by reducing product variety but increasing product differentiation (i.e., position away) from platform owner. Furthermore, we show that complementors agglomerate together, offering products with lower differentiation from one another. Our results inform about the implications of platform owner’s entry on complementors’ products. We call for potential mechanisms to incentivize complementors’ efforts in new products and direct complementors to specialize and agglomerate in products complementing platform owner’ product offerings

Review and Development of Revenue Models for A Co-Creation Platform In The Furniture Sector

Pricing is one of the most important, but underestimated tools, to enhance a company's profitability. Especially in the furniture sector, customers place a special interest in cost-efficient products and easy processes. Individualised and sustainable furniture can help to create a unique selling point and deliver real value to the customers. Therefore, a platform to create designs together is needed and can involve several stakeholders in the design and production phase. However, in order to include several stakeholders, the pricing and revenue model need to reflect individual needs and be a benefit to all. In this paper, the initial situation and potential revenue model options will be presented. Furthermore, multiple scenarios for practical use will be discovered and an overview given

Review of studies on digital transaction platforms in marketing journals

© 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Digital transaction platforms now intermediate a large number of transactions between end-customers and independent sellers and service providers in many parts of the economy. In retail, for example, Amazon.com now intermediates transactions between end-customers and hundreds of thousands of independent sellers worldwide, while Etsy.com connects artists, crafters, and collectors with buyers of a large range of niche and rare products. The growing popularity of digital transaction platforms, therefore, has significant implications for retail, marketing and distribution scholars as the existing interaction patterns in the value-chain are increasingly replaced by new digital intermediaries. The purpose of this review is, therefore, to examine, through an extensive and rigorous review of research on digital transaction platforms in marketing journals, what we know and what opportunities lie ahead to expand the theoretical and empirical understanding of digital transaction platforms. The review shows that despite increasing multi-disciplinary and managerial interest towards digital transaction platforms and the platform economy, they remain largely unexplored in marketing journals, and the existing research and theorizing attempts remain fragmented. Therefore, there are many opportunities for marketing, retail and distribution scholars to, for example, collaborate with industry and practitioners in order to gain new perspectives and access to novel data sources, and for example, meet the emerging funding requirements of many universities and governmental funding agencies for more rigorous multi-disciplinary research on digital markets and digital business models

Platform-Based Online Services, Competitive Actions, And E-Marketplace Seller Performance

Platform-based services are online services provided by e-marketplace operators to online sellers for them to compete and enhance performance. This paper aims at examining two important questions in the context of e-marketplace: (1) what kind of platform-based services can be used by online retail sellers as competitive moves? and (2) to what extent does the usage of these platform-based services impact online seller’s performance? Drawing on competitive dynamics theory, we argue that sellers that undertake a larger number of, more complex and heterogeneous platform-based services achieve better performance in e-marketplace. Using data of 1046 sellers, who open online retail stores and sell cosmetics on Taobao, a Chinese e-marketplace, we found that while undertaking more complex platform-based services is important by itself, it is more important to be strategic by undertaking a large number of platform-based services and these services had better be different from its competitors and the industry. Implications for practice and research and suggestions for future research on improving sellers’ competitiveness are discussed. This research was supported in part by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (No. CityU 141809)