Amsterdam Business School, U. of Amsterdam, Netherlands
Platform integration, which is combining different platforms’ components, is vital in driving network effects and establishing platform dominance. However, the impact of platform integration on complementor engagement within the platform ecosystem remains insufficiently understood. We propose a typology of integration in platform ecosystem and investigate how integrating two platforms influences complementor engagement. Specifically, we study how this instance of integration influences complementors’ knowledge sharing by considering the trade-off between contributing to common benefits, such as expanding user base, and protecting private interests, including valuable information and market share. Using a dataset from the sellers’ knowledge exchange forum on 1688 (domestic version of Alibaba), we study how sellers changed their knowledge sharing after the integration of 1688 with Taobao Deals, which allowed B2B sellers on 1688 to engage in B2C transactions through Taobao Deals directly. Our findings support the coopetition theory, revealing supply-side and demand-side effects. On the supply-side, integration intensifies competition, favoring manufacturers over non-manufacturers and reducing knowledge contributions from non-manufacturer complementors. This effect is more pronounced for bigger complementors. On the demand-side, integration requires complementors to understand diverse retail customer needs, diminishing knowledge sharing by multihoming complementors only if they are multihomed on other retail (i.e., B2C) platforms. These associations were negatively moderated by the knowledge quality of complementors. Additionally, we find that Covid-19 lockdowns, which were the initial motivation for the governance change, actually amplified these dual-edged integration effects.
