دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی استراتژی ورود به بازار برای ارائه دهنده پلتفرم دیجیتالی - امرالد 2017

Abstract

Purpose – How can a digital platform provider successfully secure users in its early stage to build an ecosystem? The purpose of this paper is to explore this issue through a case study on the deployment of the digital platform service RecordFarm and identifies the reasons behind its successful market access, overcoming the chronic chicken-egg problem in a two-sided market. Design/methodology/approach – The study empirically analyses the core user groups’ diffusion and usage rates by using a susceptible-infectious-recovery model of an epidemic based on a user survey and extensive archival data from the RecordFarm database. Findings – The study identifies two important early stage characteristics for a business platform to be successful: the core users’ activities on the platform are a critical element for the network’s expansion and usage, and user relationships are more important than user contents on the digital platform. Originality/value – This study confirms that organic interactions through active behaviours, such as visit frequency, uploading contents, and comment activities, are core elements for a successful digital platform to settle in the market early in the face of the difficulties of a two-sided market.

Conclusions, contributions and further research

Considering the nature of the platform business, it is very important that the business ecosystem established achieve critical mass early. Therefore, how to secure users in the early stage is a crucial question. This study performed an empirical analysis to identify the success factors of digital platform, examine how they secure users, and confirm that the activities of the core platform business participants group are important in spreading platform businesses. On the assumption that the activity of the core user group in platform network services affects users and the spread of the platform service, this study used the SIR model and compared the diffusion and usage rates of the entire and core user groups. From RecordFarm, a rapidly growing social audio platform, data of the core user group were collected, and the diffusion and usage rates estimated using discriminant analysis to identify their determinants.

In platform activation, the diffusion and use of the core user group is important for other users to continue participating and also attract new users to the service. Therefore, analysing and activating critical elements that affect diffusion and use – such as the frequency of visits, the number of following activities, and the number of uploaded contents – could be important to activate platforms where endemic problems occur (i.e. the chicken-egg problem from the two-sided market). Although this study sets only six elements (visit frequency, uploaded contents, shares per content, likes per content, comment activities, and messages left on visit), the elements affecting the active interaction between users are the most important and have the biggest impact on the diffusion and usage rates regardless of content-based and user-based circumstances.