Antong Zhu
Pronouns: She, her, hers
Research Mentor(s): Christine Choi, Ph.D Candidate
Research Mentor School/College/Department: Strategy Department, Ross School of Business
Presentation Date: Thursday, April 22, 2021
Session: Session 5 (3pm-3:50pm)
Breakout Room: Room 20
Presenter: 5
Abstract
Two-sided platforms, which rely on participants from the distinct network (users and complementors), heavily depend on the existence of complementors. For many platforms, like Lyft, the entrance of complementors brought benefit to the platform. There’s a great amount of research that already finds out the importance of complementors but they paid little emphasis on the complementors’ heterogenous decisions to collaborate with a particular platform. In the research, based on the food delivery platform data especially in LA from 2016 to 2017, we analyze the restaurants’ decision to join the food delivery platforms. Based on their decisions and the characteristics of the restaurants, we discuss how complementors’ organizational attributes influence their decisions to adopt an entrant platform. Our preliminary results show that restaurants which already entered some platforms will be more likely to join a new platform. This paper provides implications on how entrant platforms can establish an initial population of complementors, preparing the ground to compete with incumbent platforms. Keywords: Two-sided platforms; offline complementors; food delivery platforms; adjustment costs; inter-firm relationships
Authors: Christine Choi, Antong Zhu, Tyler Shea
Research Method: Library/Archival/Internet Research
