IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/indorg/v77y2021ics0167718721000345.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Platform competition with complementary products

Author

Listed:
  • Carrillo, Juan D.
  • Tan, Guofu

Abstract

We characterize the pricing structure in a model of platform competition in which two firms offer horizontally differentiated platforms and two sets of complementors offer products that are exclusive to each platform, respectively. We highlight the presence of indirect network effects: platforms and complementors benefit from the quality and number of firms in their group and suffer from the quality and number of firms in the rival’s group through their effects on prices and market share. We then determine the incentives of platforms to subsidize the independent complementors in an equilibrium. We further analyze the incentives of each platform to form a strategic alliance with complementors through contractual exclusivity or technological compatibility, or to integrate with the complementors. Finally, we discuss the welfare consequences of these strategies.

Suggested Citation

  • Carrillo, Juan D. & Tan, Guofu, 2021. "Platform competition with complementary products," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 77(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:77:y:2021:i:c:s0167718721000345
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijindorg.2021.102741
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167718721000345
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijindorg.2021.102741?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Mark Armstrong, 2006. "Competition in two‐sided markets," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 668-691, September.
    2. Economides, Nicholas & Salop, Steven C, 1992. "Competition and Integration among Complements, and Network Market Structure," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 105-123, March.
    3. Jean‐Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2006. "Two‐sided markets: a progress report," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 645-667, September.
    4. Caillaud, Bernard & Jullien, Bruno, 2003. "Chicken & Egg: Competition among Intermediation Service Providers," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 34(2), pages 309-328, Summer.
    5. Yong Chao & Timothy Derdenger, 2013. "Mixed Bundling in Two-Sided Markets in the Presence of Installed Base Effects," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1904-1926, August.
    6. Hagiu, Andrei & Jullien, Bruno, 2014. "Search diversion and platform competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 33(C), pages 48-60.
    7. Hagiu, Andrei & Wright, Julian, 2015. "Multi-sided platforms," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 162-174.
    8. Juan D. Carrillo & Guofu Tan, 2006. "Platform Competition: The Role of Multi-homing and Complementors," Working Papers 06-30, NET Institute, revised Oct 2006.
    9. Andrei Hagiu, 2006. "Pricing and Commitment by Two-Sided Platforms," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 720-737, Autumn.
    10. Timothy Derdenger, 2014. "Technological tying and the intensity of price competition: An empirical analysis of the video game industry," Quantitative Marketing and Economics (QME), Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 127-165, June.
    11. Nicholas Economides & Evangelos Katsamakas, 2006. "Two-Sided Competition of Proprietary vs. Open Source Technology Platforms and the Implications for the Software Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(7), pages 1057-1071, July.
    12. Marc Rysman, 2004. "Competition Between Networks: A Study of the Market for Yellow Pages," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 71(2), pages 483-512.
    13. E. Glen Weyl & Michal Fabinger, 2013. "Pass-Through as an Economic Tool: Principles of Incidence under Imperfect Competition," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(3), pages 528-583.
    14. Church, Jeffrey & Gandal, Neil, 1993. "Complementary network externalities and technological adoption," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 11(2), pages 239-260, June.
    15. Jay Pil Choi, 2010. "Tying In Two‐Sided Markets With Multi‐Homing," Journal of Industrial Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 58(3), pages 607-626, September.
    16. Mark Armstrong & Julian Wright, 2007. "Two-sided Markets, Competitive Bottlenecks and Exclusive Contracts," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 32(2), pages 353-380, August.
    17. Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 990-1029, June.
    18. Bruno Jullien & Alessandro Pavan, 2019. "Information Management and Pricing in Platform Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 86(4), pages 1666-1703.
    19. Guofu Tan & Junjie Zhou, 2021. "The Effects of Competition and Entry in Multi-sided Markets," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 88(2), pages 1002-1030.
    20. Frank Mathewson & Ralph A. Winter, 1997. "Tying as a Response to Demand Uncertainty," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 28(3), pages 566-583, Autumn.
    21. E. Glen Weyl, 2010. "A Price Theory of Multi-sided Platforms," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1642-1672, September.
    22. Robin S. Lee, 2013. "Vertical Integration and Exclusivity in Platform and Two-Sided Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(7), pages 2960-3000, December.
    23. Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2002. "Cooperation Among Competitors: Some Economics Of Payment Card Associations," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 33(4), pages 549-570, Winter.
    24. Jean‐Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2011. "Must‐Take Cards: Merchant Discounts And Avoided Costs," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(3), pages 462-495, June.
    25. Bruno Jullien, 2011. "Competition in Multi-sided Markets: Divide and Conquer," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 186-220, November.
    26. Andrei Hagiu, 2006. "Pricing and commitment by two‐sided platforms," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 720-737, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jie Zhang & Lingfeng Dong & Ting Ji, 2023. "The Diffusion of Competitive Platform-Based Products with Network Effects," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(11), pages 1-18, May.
    2. Shota Ichihashi, 2021. "Competing data intermediaries," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 52(3), pages 515-537, September.
    3. Lina Ma & Wanying Zhao & Longzhu Dong & Yushen Du, 2023. "Platforms Competition: An Ecosystem-View Analysis Based on Evolutionary Game Theory," SAGE Open, , vol. 13(4), pages 21582440231, December.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bruno Jullien & Alessandro Pavan & Marc Rysman, 2021. "Two-sided markets, pricing, and network effects," Post-Print hal-03828345, HAL.
    2. Wang, Jin, 2021. "Do birds of a feather flock together? Platform’s quality screening and end-users’ choices theory and empirical study of online trading platforms," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 75(C).
    3. Jan Frederic Nerbel & Markus Kreutzer, 2023. "Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 33(1), pages 1-20, December.
    4. Jullien, Bruno & Sand-Zantman, Wilfried, 2021. "The Economics of Platforms: A Theory Guide for Competition Policy," Information Economics and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    5. Jeon, Doh-Shin & Jullien, Bruno & Klimenko, Mikhail, 2021. "Language, internet and platform competition," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 131(C).
    6. Xing Wan & Javier Cenamor & Geoffrey Parker & Marshall Van Alstyne, 2017. "Unraveling Platform Strategies: A Review from an Organizational Ambidexterity Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(5), pages 1-18, May.
    7. Adachi, Takanori & Tremblay, Mark J., 2020. "Business-to-business bargaining in two-sided markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    8. Yiyi Zhou, 2017. "Bayesian Estimation of a Dynamic Model of Two-Sided Markets: Application to the U.S. Video Game Industry," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 63(11), pages 3874-3894, November.
    9. Reisinger, Markus, 2010. "Unique Equilibrium in Two-Part Tariff Competition between Two-Sided Platforms," Discussion Paper Series of SFB/TR 15 Governance and the Efficiency of Economic Systems 308, Free University of Berlin, Humboldt University of Berlin, University of Bonn, University of Mannheim, University of Munich.
    10. David S. Evans & Richard Schmalensee, 2013. "The Antitrust Analysis of Multi-Sided Platform Businesses," NBER Working Papers 18783, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    11. Van Cayseele Patrick & Reynaerts Jo, 2011. "Complementary Platforms," Review of Network Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 10(1), pages 1-33, March.
    12. Jingtao Yi & Jinqiu He & Lihong Yang, 2019. "Platform heterogeneity, platform governance and complementors’ product performance: an empirical study of the mobile application industry," Frontiers of Business Research in China, Springer, vol. 13(1), pages 1-20, December.
    13. Martin Peitz, 2023. "Governance and Regulation of Platforms," CRC TR 224 Discussion Paper Series crctr224_2023_480, University of Bonn and University of Mannheim, Germany.
    14. Tremblay, Mark J. & Adachi, Takanori & Sato, Susumu, 2023. "Cournot platform competition with mixed-homing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    15. Galeotti, Andrea & Moraga-González, José Luis, 2009. "Platform intermediation in a market for differentiated products," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(4), pages 417-428, May.
    16. Reisinger, Markus, 2014. "Two-part tariff competition between two-sided platforms," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 68(C), pages 168-180.
    17. Belleflamme, Paul & Peitz, Martin & Toulemonde, Eric, 2022. "The tension between market shares and profit under platform competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    18. Wang, Shiying & Chen, Huimiao & Wu, Desheng, 2019. "Regulating platform competition in two-sided markets under the O2O era," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 131-143.
    19. Simon P. Anderson & Bruno Jullien, 2015. "The advertising-financed business model in two-sided media markets," Post-Print hal-02866192, HAL.
    20. Anil K. Jain & Robert M. Townsend, 2021. "The economics of platforms in a Walrasian framework," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 71(3), pages 877-924, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Platform competition; Complementors; Two-sided markets; Compatibility; Integration; Exclusivity; Subsidy;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • L13 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Oligopoly and Other Imperfect Markets
    • L15 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Information and Product Quality

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:indorg:v:77:y:2021:i:c:s0167718721000345. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505551 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.