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Interesting because: Digitalization has transformed business operations and an increasing number of organizations such as Airbnb, eBay and Uber, have adopted the multi-sided platform (MSP) business model. MSP facilitates transactions between multiple independent user groups. Unlike traditional companies that prioritize process efficiency, MSPs focus on attracting customers to drive economic demand and enticing labor supply to serve these customers. This study explores the MSP model in a developing country.
Theoretical value: This study enhances the understanding of MSPs through exploring differences with traditional companies, critical success factors, and determining the biggest challenges. The main differences between MSPs and traditional companies include the need for operational agility as an essential characteristic of MSPs, and MSPs act as intermediaries between users and service providers often without direct employment relationships and with lower asset requirements compared to traditional companies. The critical success factors include the importance of strategic planning for scaling the business and expanding services or products to different regions or countries without significant additional investments, as well as offering services that encourage recurring usage. The most challenging difficulties faced by MSPs include difficulties associated with competition from companies that employ MSPs in the same niche, and the need for constant adaptations of operational processes due to scalability.
Practical value: The ranking of the difficult can help managers to tailor expansion strategies to achieve competitive advantage.
1. Introduction
Digitalization has been pivotal in various economic sectors, driving growth and transforming business operations (Veile et al., 2021). In this context, an increasing number of organizations have adopted the MSP business model (Abdelkafi et al., 2019), facilitating transactions between multiple independent user groups (Evans and Schmalensee, 2016; Garay-Rondero et al., 2019) and introducing novel configurations for value creation, delivery and capture (Montes and Olleros, 2020; Trabucchi et al., 2021).
The key characteristic of MSPs, such as Airbnb, eBay, Uber, iFood, Instacart and Rappi, is its ability to connect the needs of users with organizations that can provide specific services or products (Abdelkafi et al., 2019). These platforms serve as facilitators creating value for users through infrastructure, information, and technology (Hagiu and Wright, 2015). Some authors terms this model as “iBusiness” (Brouthers et al., 2016), emphasizing the competitive edge gained by...