THE ECOSYSTEM OF SOFTWARE PLATFORM: A STUDY OF ASYMMETRIC CROSS-SIDE NETWORK EFFECTS AND PLATFORM GOVERNANCE

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Song, Peijian; Xue, Ling; Rai, Arun; Zhang, Cheng
• 署名单位: Nanjing University; University System of Georgia; Georgia State University; Fudan University
• 刊物名称: MIS QUARTERLY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0276-7783
• DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2018/13737
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 121-+
• 关键词: word-of-mouth; 2-sided markets; VALUE CREATION; VALUE CAPTURE; IMPACT; strategies; systems; MODEL; infrastructure; COORDINATION

摘要

In the context of software platforms, we examine how cross-side network effects (CNEs) on different platform sides (app-side and user-side) are temporally asymmetric, and how these CNEs are influenced by the platform's governance policies. Informed by a perspective of value creation and capture, we theorize how the app-side and the user-side react to each other with distinct value creation/capture processes, and how these processes are influenced by the platform's governance policies on app review and platform updates. We use a time-series analysis to empirically investigate the platform ecosystem of a leading web browser. Our findings suggest that while the growth in platform usage results in long-term growth in both the number and variety of apps, the growth in the number of apps and the variety of apps only leads to short-term growth in platform usage. We also find that long app review time weakens the long-term CNE of the user-side on the app-side, but not the short-term CNE of the app-side on the user-side. Moreover, we find that frequent platform updates weaken the CNEs of both the user-side and the app-side on each other. These findings generate important implications regarding how a software platform may better govern its ecosystem with different participants.