Summary: | 博士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 商學研究所 === 93 === The way the existing literature on platform strategy treats the market is inappropriate to deal with markets with network effects. In the literature, the market is segmented by customer groups and their tiers of needs of performance and price. With platform strategy, designers can assemble platforms and complements designed for target market segments to derive product variations for catching market opportunities efficiently. However, for new products of information and communication technology (ICT), compatibility is often of more fundamental value than performance and price, the complements and derived products are developed and marketed by a group of technologically and commercially interdependent companies, and thereby conventional platform strategy may not lead to competitive advantage through internal efficient product design. For example, IBM OS/2 and Netscape Navigator are finely designed platforms but failed. Supposing the contester for a market with network effects applies conventional platform strategy, the fit between its strategy and the network context will affect the outcome of the platform. The purpose of this research is to develop a framework for managing the platform development under the network context. Through the management steps, the platform provider shall obtain competitive advantage based on network effects.
The managerial framework is constructed based on network economics and conclusion of case studies on strategies of representative emerging platforms, including Microsoft .NET, NTT DoCoMo i-mode, and Apple iTunes/iPod. The managerial framework emphasizes creating value by in-house designing functions with direct network effects, and dealing with the two-sidedness of the market with indirect network effects. That is, when facing buyers and sellers holding each other back, the new platform provider shall break the interlock by importing network benefits from other platforms with compatibility decisions, channeling the innovation of complementors, managing the demand and supply for diverse complements, and keeping the platform leadership in the dynamic process of system innovation. The iterative management steps seek to complete loops of positive feedback for the benefits of platform strategy to self-reinforce.
For practitioners, this research makes more concrete and actionable suggestions than previous platform strategy literature. The representative cases are helpful to following researches on new platforms emerging from the convergence of software, mobile telecom, and digital content on the Internet infrastructure.
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