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• Article | Strategic Management Journal | October 2018

  Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com

  Feng Zhu and Qihong Liu

  Platform owners sometimes enter complementors' product spaces to compete against them directly. Prior studies have offered two possible explanations for such entries: platform owners may target the most successful complementors so as to appropriate value from their innovations, or they may target poor performing complementors to improve the platforms' overall quality. Using data from Amazon.com, we analyze the patterns of Amazon's entry into its third-party sellers' product spaces. We find evidence consistent with the former explanation: the likelihood of Amazon's entry is positively correlated with the popularity and customer ratings of third-party sellers' products. We also find that Amazon's entry reduces the shipping costs of affected products and hence increases demand. Results also show that small third-party sellers affected by Amazon's entry appear to be discouraged from growing their businesses on the platform subsequently. The results have implications for complementors participating in various platform-based markets.

  Keywords: Competition; Market Platforms; Competitive Strategy;

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, and Qihong Liu. "Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com." Strategic Management Journal 39, no. 10 (October 2018): 2618–2642.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | September 2018

  Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (A)

  Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane

  In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that would improve market competitiveness, consumer choice, price transparency, and transaction security for all mobile payments in Australia. The banks stood to benefit as well. If they succeeded in their primary aim of opening the contactless payment functionality of Apple’s devices to their own digital wallets—something Apple had thus far refused in any market it had entered—the banks could retain customer relationships that Apple Pay threatened to usurp and limit Apple’s free-riding on the contactless payment infrastructure the banks had just spent several years building.

  Keywords: payment methods; mobile payment; digital platforms; Apple; Banks and Banking; Cooperation; Problems and Challenges; Policy; Banking Industry; Australia;

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, Susan Athey, and David Lane. "Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (A)." Harvard Business School Case 619-010, September 2018.  View Details

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• Supplement | HBS Case Collection | September 2018

  Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (B)

  Feng Zhu, Susan Athey and David Lane

  In summer 2016, four of Australia’s top five banks petitioned regulators for permission to bargain collectively with Apple over the terms under which they would support its digital wallet, Apple Pay. They argued that doing so would force concessions from Apple that would improve market competitiveness, consumer choice, price transparency, and transaction security for all mobile payments in Australia. The banks stood to benefit as well. If they succeeded in their primary aim of opening the contactless payment functionality of Apple’s devices to their own digital wallets—something Apple had thus far refused in any market it had entered—the banks could retain customer relationships that Apple Pay threatened to usurp and limit Apple’s free-riding on the contactless payment infrastructure the banks had just spent several years building. This case supplements the (A) case, 619-010.

  Keywords: payment methods; mobile payment; digital platforms; Apple; Banks and Banking; Cooperation; Problems and Challenges; Policy; Banking Industry; Australia;

  Citation:

  Zhu, Feng, Susan Athey, and David Lane. "Apple Pay and Mobile Payments in Australia (B)." Harvard Business School Supplement 619-011, September 2018.  View Details

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