The Engagement of Complementors and the Role of Platform Boundary Resources in e-Commerce Platform Ecosystems
Open accessAbstract
The success of digital platforms can be attributed to the engagement of autonomous complementors as exemplified by e-commerce Content Management System (CMS) platforms such as WordPress and Shopify. Platform owners provide Platform Boundary Resources (PBRs) to stimulate and control complementor engagement. Despite the increasing scholarly interest in digital platform ecosystems, their exact role in facilitating and channeling complementor engagement remains unclear. Therefore, we conducted an embedded case study on CMS platform ecosystems, comprising a total of 24 interviews with platform owners and complementors. We inductively derive five types of complementor engagement and their respective manifestations and two overarching engagement goals of complementors. Moreover, we determine the different types of PBRs utilized, including their critical effects, and distinguish between uniform and individual PBRs reflecting their respective generalizability and scalability. We discuss the findings by introducing the concepts of complementor resourcing and complementor securing and shed light on the standardization-individualization tension of PBRs faced by platform owners.
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On the software level, complementors rely on platform-specific boundary resources, such as SDKs, that platforms provide to create ties to a particular ecosystem.
“On the software level, complementors rely on platform-specific boundary resources, such as SDKs, that platforms provide to create ties to a particular ecosystem (Engert et al., 2022;Zhao & Aaltonen, 2023).”
From What role do data network effects play for multihoming complements? An empirical analysis of platform complementors’ strategies for consumer value creation (2025) · cites this paper as Engert et al., 2022
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References 71 · Cited by 63
Research works printed but not linked: 1
- Cusumano, M. A., Yoffie, D. B., & Gawer, A. (2020). The Future of Platforms. MIT Sloan Management Review. Retrieved from https:// sloan review. mit. edu/ artic le/ the-future-of-platf orms/
- Authors
- Engert, M., Evers, J., Hein, A., & Krcmar, H.
- Affiliations
- Technical University of Munich (DE)
- Corresponding author
- Engert, Martin
- Venue
- Information Systems Frontiers
- Published
- 2022-01-03
- Volume
- 24
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 2007-2025
- ISSN
- 1387-3326 (ISSN-L)
- 1572-9419
- OpenAlex
- W4205454277
- Cited by
- 63
- References
- 71
- Citations by year
- 2026: 14 · 2025: 14 · 2024: 15 · 2023: 15 · 2022: 5
- FWCI
- 9.15
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Information Systems Frontiers (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Alexandria (UniSG) (University of St.Gallen) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Econstor (Econstor) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- mediaTUM – the media and publications repository of the Technical University Munich (Technical University Munich) (submittedVersion)
- mediaTUM – the media and publications repository of the Technical University Munich (Technical University Munich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- mediaTUM (Technical University of Munich) (submittedVersion, other-oa)
- Funders
- Technische Universität München
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Innovation and Knowledge Management
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Digital Economy and Work Transformation
- Keywords
- digital platform ecosystems, content management systems, WordPress, Shopify, platform owners
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