Welfare Evaluation of Shop-Type Strategies on Digital Food Delivery Platforms

Xiaolan Zhou, Yasuyuki Sawada and Elaine S. Tan
Additional contact information
Xiaolan Zhou: School of Economics, Shandong University
Elaine S. Tan: Economic Research and Development Impact Department, Asian Development Bank

No CIRJE-F-1270, CIRJE F-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo

Abstract: Using proprietary data from Alibaba, we estimate a structural model for the digital food delivery platform and quantify the welfare effects of shop-type strategies. We find that shops with higher net gross merchandise value (GMV), multi-app stores, and chain stores exhibit larger cross-network effects on both consumers and couriers. These types of shops are more effective in driving the expansion of the platform’s market size and contribute more significantly to the platform’s net GMV. The magnitudes of these effects are amplified in a dynamic setting due to the positive direct network effects at the platform level. Specifically, platforms' strategy of prioritizing top merchants over supporting a multitude of mid-tier merchants proves more effective in the fresh food sector than in the cooked food sectors characterized by greater product heterogeneity.

Pages: 48 pages
Date: 2026-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-agr, nep-com and nep-pay
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.cirje.e.u-tokyo.ac.jp/research/dp/2026/2026cf1270.pdf (application/pdf)

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:tky:fseres:2026cf1270

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CIRJE F-Series from CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CIRJE administrative office ().