When "more" is not better.

Abstract

This article examines the value-creation capacity of intra-platform competition (IPC) and exclusivity; two main strategies platforms use to incentivize, accumulate and extract rent from complementary content resources - complementors. Building on the concept of ´resource functionality´ we show that, for enhanced levels of IPC, exclusive complementors have limited functional value and rareness, failing to bring differentiation capacity to the platform´s system. Also, in line with the logic of ´capability equivalence´, we show that platform´s differentiation in terms of the composition of complementors´ portfolio has a U-shaped relationship with platform performance.Complementary resources, Intra-platform competition, Platform markets, Resource functionatility, Multi-sided markets