EconPapers    
Economics at your fingertips  
 

Complementors' engagement in an ecosystem: A study of publishers' e‐book offerings on Amazon Kindle

Richard D. Wang and Cameron D. Miller

Strategic Management Journal, 2020, vol. 41, issue 1, 3-26

Abstract: Research Summary In ecosystems, tensions between value creation and appropriation can arise when complementors form relationships with a partner that benefits from network effects. While creating value collectively, these relationships strengthen the network effects, which increase the partner's ability to appropriate value. We posit that complementors strategize their product offerings to benefit from the relationship with the partner while preserving bargaining power by keeping relationships with other partners as outside options. We examine book publishers' product portfolios in the Amazon Kindle e‐book and the printed book ecosystems. Our results illuminate specific product offering decisions by large publishers that are more protective of the printed book ecosystem and less conducive to Kindle's success. This research adds to the literature on interorganizational relationships, platform ecosystems, and managing digital innovations. Managerial Summary How do book publishers deal with Amazon? This paper compares book publishers' product offerings on Amazon's Kindle digital platform and in the physical print channel. We find that publishers offer high demand products as e‐books on Kindle to benefit from logistics savings. Yet, relative to small publishers, large publishers product decisions that support Kindle less, such as withholding some of their greatest revenue generating books. Such decisions could both limit Kindle's attractiveness to the consumers and preserve the economic viability of the print channel as an outside option. These findings improve our understanding of how companies can leverage their product portfolios to both benefit from digital technology efficiencies and maintain their bargaining power vis‐à‐vis digital platforms.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3076

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:bla:stratm:v:41:y:2020:i:1:p:3-26

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0143-2095

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Strategic Management Journal from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().

 
Page updated 2024-12-28
Handle: RePEc:bla:stratm:v:41:y:2020:i:1:p:3-26
            
pFad - Phonifier reborn

Pfad - The Proxy pFad of © 2024 Garber Painting. All rights reserved.

Note: This service is not intended for secure transactions such as banking, social media, email, or purchasing. Use at your own risk. We assume no liability whatsoever for broken pages.


Alternative Proxies:

Alternative Proxy

pFad Proxy

pFad v3 Proxy

pFad v4 Proxy