Ivre De Livres: Platform Strategies in the e-Book Market
Year: 2015
Type: preprint
Abstract: Over the last years, major traditional book retailers like Barnes & Noble (US), Blackwell (UK) or Thalia (DE) are exposed to a disruptive market change and redistribution of market power caused by technology giants Amazon, Adobe, Apple, Google and the like. Two disruptive innovations opened the publishing market for technology companies, namely the introduction of online retail and the advent of e-books, thereby successfully shaking the foundations of the once so dominant legacy companies. While the industries’ prevailing incumbent companies are merchant companies, the new entrants operate as over-the-top (OTT) platform businesses. This new about-face in the market triggered incumbents to adapt to the competitive situation by striving for a platform status themselves, in an attempt to counter the technology firms’ strategic movements. As a result, the complexity of the current market set-up has drastically increased, since several platforms are competing next to each other and even on top of each other, in the form of ‘Platform Networks’ (PNs). The aim of this paper is to reveal and explain important strategic actions taking place in the changing ecosystem of the publishing industry. For this purpose, we make use of a novel, self-designed matrix to assess horizontal, vertical and cross-layer competitive dynamics. In the empirical part, the matrix is applied to scrutinise and contextualise the competitive dynamics of both Amazon and Apple by means of a case study. As such, the paper aspires to take stock of what caused the power shifts in the industry.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Institutions: Vrije Universiteit Brussel, IMEC
Language: English
Subfield: Strategy and Management
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2252976676