Seeding for quality of platform complements: Evidence from amazon's alexa ecosystem

Runyu Shi, Aleksi Aaltonen, Ola Henfridsson

Research output: Contribution to conferencePaperpeer-review

Abstract

An important objective for digital platform governance is to ensure the creation of high-quality complements. For nascent platforms, complements are typically the main force in attracting early adopters and, consequently, further improving platform's attractiveness to potential complementors. In this research-in-progress paper, we study seeding - direct financial support to selected complements by the platform owner - as an indirect governance mechanism in motivating the complement quality improvement in general. The dataset consists of 499 connected home complements on Amazon's Alexa platform that were released during the first three years after the platform launch. The preliminary findings reveal that complements launched after platform owner's seeding actions generally show better quality. Such a quality improvement effect seems to be reinforced if the platform owner can conduct repetitive seeding on the same complement. However, the effectiveness of repetitive seeding may vary depending on the investment and the maturity of the target complement's business.

Original languageEnglish
StatePublished - 2019
Event23rd Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Secure ICT Platform for the 4th Industrial Revolution, PACIS 2019 - Xi'an, China
Duration: 8 Jul 201912 Jul 2019

Conference

Conference23rd Pacific Asia Conference on Information Systems: Secure ICT Platform for the 4th Industrial Revolution, PACIS 2019
Country/TerritoryChina
CityXi'an
Period8/07/1912/07/19

Keywords

  • Connected Home complements
  • Digital platform
  • Platform strategy and governance

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