Exploring Central Platform Types and Related Concepts in Service Research – A Systematic Literature Review

Service exchange is considered as an integral component of digital platforms. Academic research differentiates between technical, economic, and social platforms, yet scholars face a multitude of diverse platform sub-types being inconsistently utilized. To address that issue and to provide a lexical platform definition overview, this study conducts a systematic scoping literature review on platform types and related concepts in the service domain. The systematic analysis of 49 high-quality service journal articles reveals that numerous digital platform sub-types exist in service research with overlapping definitions. Moreover, several relationship marketing constructs are investigated as central related concepts. This article is the first to explore divergent platform term definitions in the service domain and thus contributes a complementary service science lens on digital platforms alongside IS research

Technological Compatibility between Platforms and Multi-homing of Third-Party Developers

Platform compatibility is an important strategic decision in platform competition. However, the literature examining its role in platform competition is still lacking. This study focuses on investigating the impact of platform compatibility on developers’ multi-homing decisions, exclusive app contribution on the new platform, and app performance using a dataset of the developers and their complements that we collected from the app distribution sites of two major web browsers, Chrome and Firefox. Our results show that platform compatibility will attract more developers with small user bases on Chrome to join Firefox. Moreover, platform compatibility encourages multi-homing developers with less user base on Firefox to contribute exclusive apps for Firefox and weakens the negative effect of market competition on developers’ incentives of contributing exclusive apps. We also find that platform compatibility strengthens the positive relationship between multi-homing developers’ app performance across platforms but this moderating effect is weaker for exclusive apps