Optimal distinctiveness, strategic categorization, and product market entry on the Google Play app platform

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Barlow, Matthew A.; Verhaal, J. Cameron; Angus, Ryan W.
• 署名单位: University of Nebraska System; University of Nebraska Lincoln; Tulane University; West Virginia University
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/smj.3019
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 1219-1242
• 关键词: MARKET CATEGORIES; new market entry; OPTIMAL DISTINCTIVENESS; platform markets; strategic categorization

摘要

Research Summary: New entrants often face uncertainty regarding how to optimally position themselves within product markets. We suggest that new entrants can use two important schemas to strategically categorize themselves to gain a competitive advantage in platform markets: category exemplars and category prototypes. Using a unique dataset of more than 83,000 new Google Play developers and more than 139,000 apps, we find that the optimally distinct entry point is at a high level of exemplar similarity and a low level of prototype similarity. We find that greater alignment of an entrant with the prototype corresponds to a weaker benefit of exemplar similarity. These findings have important implications for understanding competitive dynamics within product markets, strategic positioning at entry, and the interdependence of strategic categorization decisions. Managerial Summary: Entrepreneurial startups often find it difficult to know how to optimally position their products among a large number of rivals in highly competitive platform markets. Our study suggests that these startups can draw on two reference points to help determine the optimal positioning for their products: category exemplars and category prototypes. Exemplars include the most successful products in a market category while prototypes represent the most common products in a category. Drawing on a large dataset obtained from the Google Play app store, we find that developers can substantially increase the installs of their first app by crafting an app text description that is as similar as possible to the description of a category exemplar and as different as possible from the category's prototypical description.