And the winner is …? The desirable and undesirable effects of platform awards


Förderer, Jens ; Lüker, Nele ; Heinzl, Armin



DOI: https://doi.org/10.1287/isre.2021.1019
URL: https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/isr...
Document Type: Article
Year of publication: 2021
The title of a journal, publication series: Information Systems Research : ISR
Volume: 32
Issue number: 4
Page range: 1155-1172
Place of publication: Linthicum, MD ; Hannover, MD
Publishing house: INFORMS
ISSN: 1047-7047 , 1526-5536
Related URLs:
Publication language: English
Institution: Außerfakultäre Einrichtungen > Institut für Enterprise Systems (InES)
Außerfakultäre Einrichtungen > Graduate School of Economic and Social Sciences - CDSB (Business Studies)
Business School > ABWL u. Wirtschaftsinformatik I (Heinzl 2002-)
Subject: 330 Economics
380 Commerce, communications, transportation
650 Management
Abstract: We study platform firms’ decision to recognize innovation by complementors ex post through awards. Despite being purely symbolic, awards might set incentives for complementors’ product strategies that can eventually lead to both desirable and undesirable outcomes for the platform firm. We depart from signaling theory and derive hypotheses on the effects of awards on complementors’ product strategies. To test them, we implement a quasi-experiment in the context of the Google Android mobile platform and the prestigious Google Play Award. We infer the effect of the award by estimating the difference-in-differences between award winners and runners-up, before and after the conferral. The main sample encompasses 125 award nominees and their 793 apps between 2016 and 2018. We report three findings. First, the award encourages recipients to focus on releasing complement improvements rather than new complements. Second, the award increases recipients’ likelihood of multihoming. Finally, the award increases new complement releases in the recipients’ market niche by attracting other complementors. We contribute to the platform governance literature by informing about the effects of awards. Additionally, our findings have theoretical implications for understanding “soft” platform governance mechanisms.




Dieser Eintrag ist Teil der Universitätsbibliographie.




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