The Engagement of Complementors and the Role of Platform Boundary Resources in e-Commerce Platform Ecosystems

Martin Engert (), Julia Evers, Andreas Hein and Helmut Krcmar
Additional contact information
Martin Engert: Technical University of Munich
Julia Evers: Technical University of Munich
Andreas Hein: Technical University of Munich
Helmut Krcmar: Technical University of Munich

Information Systems Frontiers, 2022, vol. 24, issue 6, No 14, 2007-2025

Abstract: Abstract The success of digital platforms can be attributed to the engagement of autonomous complementors as exemplified by e-commerce Content Management System (CMS) platforms such as WordPress and Shopify. Platform owners provide Platform Boundary Resources (PBRs) to stimulate and control complementor engagement. Despite the increasing scholarly interest in digital platform ecosystems, their exact role in facilitating and channeling complementor engagement remains unclear. Therefore, we conducted an embedded case study on CMS platform ecosystems, comprising a total of 24 interviews with platform owners and complementors. We inductively derive five types of complementor engagement and their respective manifestations and two overarching engagement goals of complementors. Moreover, we determine the different types of PBRs utilized, including their critical effects, and distinguish between uniform and individual PBRs reflecting their respective generalizability and scalability. We discuss the findings by introducing the concepts of complementor resourcing and complementor securing and shed light on the standardization-individualization tension of PBRs faced by platform owners.

Keywords: Digital platform ecosystems; Complementor engagement; Platform boundary resources; Content management systems; e-Commerce; Case study (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (6)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-021-10236-3 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infosf:v:24:y:2022:i:6:d:10.1007_s10796-021-10236-3

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10796

DOI: 10.1007/s10796-021-10236-3

Access Statistics for this article

Information Systems Frontiers is currently edited by Ram Ramesh and Raghav Rao

More articles in Information Systems Frontiers from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().