UCL Discovery
UCL home » Library Services » Electronic resources » UCL Discovery

Platform Competition: A Systematic and Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature

Rietveld, J; Schilling, MA; (2020) Platform Competition: A Systematic and Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature. Journal of Management 10.1177/0149206320969791. (In press). Green open access

[thumbnail of Rietveld_0149206320969791.pdf]
Preview
Text
Rietveld_0149206320969791.pdf - Published Version

Download (693kB) | Preview

Abstract

Over the past three decades, platform competition—the competition between firms that facilitate transactions and govern interactions between two or more distinct user groups who are connected via an indirect network—has attracted significant interest from the fields of management and organizations, information systems, economics, and marketing. Despite common interests in research questions, methodologies, and empirical contexts by scholars from across these fields, the literature has developed mostly in isolated fashion. This article offers a systematic and interdisciplinary review of the literature on platform competition by analyzing a sample of 333 articles published between 1985 and 2019. The review contributes by (a) documenting how the literature on platform competition has evolved; (b) outlining four themes of shared scholarly interest, including how network effects generate “winner-takes-all” dynamics that influence strategies, such as pricing and quality; how network externalities and platform strategy interact with corporate-level decisions, such as vertical integration or diversification into complementary goods; how heterogeneity in the platform and its users influences platform dynamics; and how the platform “hub” orchestrates value creation and capture in the overall ecosystem; and (c) highlighting several areas for future research. The review aims to facilitate a broader understanding of the platform competition research that helps to advance our knowledge of how platforms compete to create and capture value.

Type: Article
Title: Platform Competition: A Systematic and Interdisciplinary Review of the Literature
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1177/0149206320969791
Publisher version: https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206320969791
Language: English
Additional information: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Keywords: platform, ecosystem, complementor, two-sided market, competition
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of Engineering Science > UCL School of Management
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10111715
Downloads since deposit
481Downloads
Download activity - last month
Download activity - last 12 months
Downloads by country - last 12 months

Archive Staff Only

View Item View Item