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Show Results For
- All HBS Web
(2,096)
- People (1)
- News (299)
- Research (1,553)
- Events (11)
- Multimedia (14)
- Faculty Publications (767)
- Article
Friends or Foes? Examining Platform Owners' Entry into Complementors' Spaces
By: Feng Zhu
As platform owners continue to expand their ecosystems, many of them have started to provide consumers with their own complementary applications. These moves position the platform owners as direct competitors to their complementors. This paper surveys empirical studies... View Details
Zhu, Feng. "Friends or Foes? Examining Platform Owners' Entry into Complementors' Spaces." Special Issue on Platforms. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 28, no. 1 (Spring 2019): 23–28.
Platform Envelopment
Due to network effects and switching costs in platform markets, entrants generally must offer revolutionary functionality. Platform envelopment offers a second entry path: one that does not rely upon Schumpeterian innovation. Examples of successful envelopment... View Details
- 2014
- Working Paper
Search Diversion and Platform Competition Online Appendix
By: Andrei Hagiu and Bruno Jullien
Hagiu, Andrei, and Bruno Jullien. "Search Diversion and Platform Competition Online Appendix." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 14-072, February 2014.
Repositioning and Cost-Cutting: The Impact of Competition on Platform Strategies
We study how platform firms use repositioning and cost-cutting in response to competition, elucidate external and internal factors that constrain or enable these responses, and examine how the firms’ responses affect their performance. Our empirical context is... View Details
- 2020
- Working Paper
Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger
By: Chiara Farronato, Jessica Fong and Andrey Fradkin
Digital platforms are increasingly the subject of regulatory scrutiny. In comparison to multiple competitors, a single platform may increase consumer welfare if network effects are large or may decrease welfare due to higher prices or reduction in platform variety. We... View Details
Keywords: Platform Differentiation; Digital Platforms; Network Effects; Measurement and Metrics; Mergers and Acquisitions; Outcome or Result
Farronato, Chiara, Jessica Fong, and Andrey Fradkin. "Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger." NBER Working Paper Series, No. 28047, November 2020.
- December 2011
- Article
Platform Envelopment
By: Thomas R. Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne
Due to network effects and switching costs in platform markets, entrants generally must offer revolutionary functionality. We explore a second entry path that does not rely upon Schumpeterian innovation: platform envelopment. Through envelopment, a provider in one... View Details
Keywords: Digital Platforms; Business and Stakeholder Relations; Economic Systems; Development Economics; Business or Company Management; Business Strategy; Network Effects; Information Technology Industry; Technology Industry
Eisenmann, Thomas R., Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne. "Platform Envelopment." Strategic Management Journal 32, no. 12 (December 2011): 1270–1285.
- January 2024
- Article
Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger
By: Chiara Farronato, Jessica Fong and Andrey Fradkin
Digital platforms are increasingly the subject of regulatory scrutiny. In comparison to multiple competitors, a single platform may increase consumer welfare if network effects are large or may decrease welfare due to higher prices or reduction in platform variety. We... View Details
Keywords: Platform Differentiation; Digital Platforms; Network Effects; Measurement and Metrics; Mergers and Acquisitions; Outcome or Result
Farronato, Chiara, Jessica Fong, and Andrey Fradkin. "Dog Eat Dog: Balancing Network Effects and Differentiation in a Digital Platform Merger." Management Science 70, no. 1 (January 2024): 464–483.
- Fall 2014
- Article
Price Restrictions in Multi-sided Platforms: Practices and Responses
By: Benjamin Edelman and Julian Wright
In connecting buyers to sellers, some two-sided platforms require that sellers offer their lowest prices through the platform, disallowing lower prices for direct sales or sales through competing platforms. In this article, we explore the various contexts where such... View Details
Edelman, Benjamin, and Julian Wright. "Price Restrictions in Multi-sided Platforms: Practices and Responses." Competition Policy International 10, no. 2 (Fall 2014).
- 2021
- Working Paper
Competitive Two-Part Tariffs
By: Jorge Tamayo and Guofu Tan
We study competitive two-part tariffs in a model of asymmetric duopoly firms that offer (vertically and horizontally) differentiated products. We show that the sign of the markup for each product depends on the average expected demand among all customers as well as the... View Details
Keywords: Product Differentiation; Two-part Tariffs; Marginal-cost Pricing; Cross-subsidization; Competition; Price
Tamayo, Jorge, and Guofu Tan. "Competitive Two-Part Tariffs." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-089, March 2021. (R&R American Economic Journal: Microeconomics.)
- 2018
- Working Paper
Platform Competition: Betfair and the U.K. Market for Sports Betting
By: Ramon Casadesus-Masanell and Neil Campbell
We examine two episodes of strategic interaction in the U.K. betting industry: (i) Betfair (an entrant multi-sided platform or MSP) vs. Flutter (also an MSP), and (ii) Betfair vs. traditional bookmakers. We find that although Betfair was an underfunded second mover in... View Details
Keywords: Platform Design; Betting; Digital Platforms; Design; Network Effects; Business Model; Competition; Cooperation; Market Entry and Exit
Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon, and Neil Campbell. "Platform Competition: Betfair and the U.K. Market for Sports Betting." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-057, November 2018.
- Research Summary
Competing Platforms
This paper focuses on platform-intermediated markets where there
are a small number of firms on one side and analyzes the strategic
competition among platforms to get the oligopolistic side
on-board. Due to the prevalence of both same and cross-side
externalities,... View Details
- 2007
- Working Paper
Platform Envelopment
By: Thomas Eisenmann, Geoffrey Parker and Marshall Van Alstyne
Due to network effects and switching costs in platform markets, entrants generally must offer revolutionary functionality. We explore a second entry path that does not rely upon Schumpeterian innovation: platform envelopment. Through envelopment, a provider in one... View Details
Eisenmann, Thomas, Geoffrey Parker, and Marshall Van Alstyne. "Platform Envelopment." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 07-104, June 2007. (Revised September 2008, October 2009, July 2010.)
- July 2024
- Case
Dynamic Pricing at Wendy’s: Where’s the Beef?
By: Elie Ofek, Alicia Dadlani and Martha Hostetter
In early 2024, Wendy’s new CEO announced on an earnings call that the company would install digital menus in its US locations so it could begin testing dynamic pricing—changing prices up or down in response to shifts in supply and demand – as well as allow engaging in... View Details
- 2011
- Working Paper
Price Competition under Multinomial Logit Demand Functions with Random Coefficients
In this paper, we postulate a general class of price competition models with Mixed Multinomial Logit demand functions under affine cost functions. We first characterize the equilibrium behavior of this class of models in the case where each product in the market is... View Details
Keywords: Customers; Income Characteristics; Price; Product Marketing; Mathematical Methods; Competition; Segmentation
Allon, Gad, Awi Federgruen, and Margaret Pierson. "Price Competition under Multinomial Logit Demand Functions with Random Coefficients." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 12-030, October 2011.
- Article
Two-Sided Platforms: Product Variety and Pricing Structures
By: Andrei Hagiu
This paper provides a new modeling framework to analyze two-sided platforms connecting producers and consumers. In contrast to the existing literature, indirect network effects are determined endogenously, through consumers' taste for variety and producer competition.... View Details
Keywords: Pricing Structure; Indirect Network Effects; Product Variety; Price; Network Effects; Two-Sided Platforms; Product; Renting or Rental; Competition
Hagiu, Andrei. "Two-Sided Platforms: Product Variety and Pricing Structures ." Journal of Economics & Management Strategy 18, no. 4 (Winter 2009).
- 2020
- Working Paper
How Competition Affects Contributions to Open Source Platforms: Evidence from OpenStreetMap and Google Maps
By: Abhishek Nagaraj and Henning Piezunka
Open source platforms often face competition from commercial alternatives and yet we lack an understanding of whether and how commercial competition affects contributions to open source platforms. We study how contributions to OpenStreetMap, a widely-used open source... View Details
Keywords: Open Source Platforms; Contributions; Competitive Entry; Impact; Multi-Sided Platforms; Competition
Nagaraj, Abhishek, and Henning Piezunka. "How Competition Affects Contributions to Open Source Platforms: Evidence from OpenStreetMap and Google Maps." Working Paper, February 2020.
- spring 1987
- Article
Second-Sourcing and the Experience Curve: Price Competition in Defense Procurement
By: James J. Anton and Dennis A. Yao
We examine a dynamic model of price competition in defense procurement that incorporates the experience curve, asymmetric cost information, and the availability of a higher cost alternative system. We model acquisition as a two-stage process in which initial production... View Details
Anton, James J., and Dennis A. Yao. "Second-Sourcing and the Experience Curve: Price Competition in Defense Procurement." RAND Journal of Economics 18, no. 1 (spring 1987): 57–76. (Harvard users click here for full text.)
- 10 Jul 2007
- Working Paper Summaries
Platform Envelopment
- 2019
- Working Paper
Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 14 Introducing Open Platforms and Ecosystems
The purpose of this chapter is to lay the groundwork for a comprehensive theoretical investigation of open platform systems. To do this, we must first recognize that, although there is a strong family resemblance among all platform systems, there are different types of... View Details
Keywords: Open Platforms; Business Ecosystems; Information Technology; Organizational Design; Industry Structures; Digital Platforms
Baldwin, Carliss Y. "Design Rules, Volume 2: How Technology Shapes Organizations: Chapter 14 Introducing Open Platforms and Ecosystems." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 19-035, October 2018. (Revised January 2019.)