CoChat
Sign Up
Cited by 546Digital Platforms and EconomicsConsumer Market Behavior and PricingBusiness Strategy and Innovation

Competing with complementors: An empirical look at Amazon.com

Zhu, Feng, Liu, Qihong·2018·Strategic Management Journal
DOI 10.1002/smj.2932
Open this paper in CoChat — free account

Abstract

Research Summary : Platform owners sometimes enter complementors' product spaces and compete against them. Using data from Amazon.com to study Amazon's entry pattern into third‐party sellers' product spaces, we find that Amazon is more likely to target successful product spaces. We also find that Amazon is less likely to enter product spaces that require greater seller efforts to grow, suggesting that complementors' platform‐specific investments influence platform owners' entry decisions. While Amazon's entry discourages affected third‐party sellers from subsequently pursuing growth on the platform, it increases product demand and reduces shipping costs for consumers. We consider the implications of these findings for complementors in platform‐based markets. Managerial Summary : Platform owners can exert considerable influence over their complementors' welfare. Many complementors with successful products are pushed out of markets because platform owners enter their product spaces and compete directly with them. To mitigate such risks, complementors could build their businesses by aggregating nonblockbuster products or focusing on products requiring significant platform‐specific investments to grow. They should also develop capabilities in new product discovery so that they could continually bring innovative products to their platforms.

Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.1002/smj.2932

Cites

95 of 95 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Recomputing p-values needs the paper’s full text.

Claims the paper makes

This paper’s full text isn’t openly available, so its claims and self-check weren’t run. The registry and citation checks still apply.

Claims other papers make about this one

Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?

  • After emergence is concluded, the DPE is orchestrated and maneuvered through phases of technological change, sustaining its competitive position against other ecosystems or powerful complementors within its own ecosystem.

    “After emergence is concluded, the DPE is orchestrated and maneuvered through phases of technological change (Ozalp et al., 2018), sustaining its competitive position against other ecosystems or powerful complementors within its own ecosystem (Zhu & Liu, 2018).”

    From Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems (2023) · cites this paper as Zhu & Liu, 2018

  • These stages are expected to be induced from significant technological change or through a loss in profitability or growth opportunities.

    “These stages are expected to be induced from significant technological change (Cennamo, 2018;Ozalp et al., 2018) or through a loss in profitability or growth opportunities (Zhu & Liu, 2018).”

    From Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems (2023) · cites this paper as Zhu & Liu, 2018

  • The firm maneuvers the DPE through phases of technological change to sustain its competitive position against other ecosystems or powerful complementors within its own ecosystem.

    “The firm then maneuvers the DPE through phases of technological change (Ozalp et al., 2018) to sustain its competitive position against other ecosystems or powerful complementors within its own ecosystem (Zhu & Liu, 2018).”

    From Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems (2023) · cites this paper as Zhu & Liu, 2018

Cites

Flagged first, then by citations

Cited by

Sorted by citations

Related

Authors
Zhu, F., & Liu, Q.
Affiliations
  • Harvard University (US)
  • University of Oklahoma (US)
Corresponding author
Zhu, Feng
ORCID
Venue
Strategic Management Journal
Publisher
Wiley
Published
2018-08-28
Volume
39
Issue
10
Pages
2618-2642
ISSN
  • 0143-2095 (ISSN-L)
  • 1097-0266
DOI
10.1002/smj.2932
OpenAlex
W3021774595
Cited by
546
References
95
Citations by year
2026: 61 · 2025: 84 · 2024: 89 · 2023: 76 · 2022: 75 · 2021: 65 · 2020: 58 · 2019: 26 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 3 · 2016: 1
FWCI
65.74
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
onlinelibrary.wiley.com/termsAndConditions#vor (vor)
Locations
  • Strategic Management Journal (publishedVersion)
  • Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University) (acceptedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Market Behavior and Pricing
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Business Strategy and Innovation
Keywords
Amazon.com, complementors, platform entry, third-party sellers, product spaces, platform owners, shipping costs, product demand, e-commerce

About these checks

Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.

Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.

What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›

Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review