The DOI matches its Crossref record; 59 of the 60 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Platform Performance Investment in the Presence of Network Externalities
Open accessAbstract
Managers of emerging platforms must decide what level of platform performance to invest in at each product development cycle in markets that exhibit two-sided network externalities. High performance is a selling point for consumers, but in many cases it requires developers to make large investments to participate. Abstracting from an example drawn from the video game industry, we build a strategic model to investigate the trade-off between investing in high platform performance versus reducing investment in order to facilitate third party content development. We carry out a full analysis of three distinct settings: monopoly, price-setting duopoly, and price-taking duopoly. We provide insights on the optimum investment in platform performance and demonstrate how conventional wisdom about product development may be misleading in the presence of strong cross-network externalities. In particular, we show that, contrary to the conventional wisdom about “winner-take-all” markets, heavily investing in the core performance of a platform does not always yield a competitive edge. We characterize the conditions under which offering a platform with lower performance but greater availability of content can be a winning strategy.
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“Multihoming also requires the development of a wider pool of technological capabilities at the complementor firm (Anderson et al. 2014), resulting in a higher cost structure.”
From Smart Timing for Smart Products? Complementor Multihoming in Nascent Platform Markets (2026) · cites this paper as Anderson et al. 2014
In the citing paper
“Although the smart home market was at a ferment stage during our study period, by 2017, it had already reached a worldwide household penetration rate of 2.4% and was expected to grow rapidly.5”
From Smart Timing for Smart Products? Complementor Multihoming in Nascent Platform Markets (2026) · cites this paper as [5]
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Metadata
- Authors
- Anderson, E. G., Parker, G. G., & Tan, B.
- Affiliations
- The University of Texas at Austin (US)
- Tulane University (US)
- Venue
- Information Systems Research
- Published
- 2014-03
- Volume
- 25
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 152-172
- ISSN
- 1047-7047 (ISSN-L)
- 1526-5536
- OpenAlex
- W3123202234
- Cited by
- 326
- References
- 60
- Citations by year
- 2026: 21 · 2025: 37 · 2024: 50 · 2023: 44 · 2022: 25 · 2021: 31 · 2020: 31 · 2019: 16 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 9 · 2016: 20 · 2015: 7 · 2014: 5
- FWCI
- 32.41
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- doi.org
- Locations
- Information Systems Research (publishedVersion)
- SSRN Electronic Journal (acceptedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Strategy and Management › Digital Platforms and Economics
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Innovation Diffusion and Forecasting
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Supply Chain and Inventory Management
- Keywords
- video game industry, product development strategy, monopoly, duopoly, winner-take-all markets
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