Multihoming strategies in e-commerce: An exploratory study of seller characteristics, marketing resources, and business performance

The expansion of platform businesses has provided participants with new opportunities to use across multiple platforms simultaneously. This practice, referred to as ‘multihoming’, offers advantages, especially for sellers who market products or services through platforms. Based on strategic approaches to multihoming, sellers can enhance brand recognition, expand their customer base, and improve business outcomes. This study explores the key antecedents of multihoming strategies (expansion strategy and sustainment strategy) among e-commerce sellers and examines their associations with business performance (financial and non-financial performance). To achieve this objective, we conducted an online survey targeting 646 sellers registered as e-commerce business operators in Statistics Korea. Key findings suggest that sellers with higher education levels use multiple platforms more efficiently, adapt quickly to market changes, and maintain multihoming longer to maximize exposure and reduce risk. Conversely, female and older sellers tend to sustain longer periods of multihoming. Sellers with extensive marketing resources, such as diverse product categories or offline stores, tend to multihome on fewer platforms for shorter durations, whereas those offering popular product tends to multihome across more platforms for longer periods. The research highlights that while the expansion and sustainment of multihoming strategies are generally positively associated with performance, exceeding a certain threshold can lead to adverse effects, underscoring the importance of adopting an appropriate multihoming strategy to drive commercial success. These findings offer valuable guidance for platform operators, sellers, and policymakers in navigating the dynamic e-commerce landscape.