多平台企业协同效应的来源及作用机理——阿里巴巴多平台体系的案例研究

The Source and Mechanism of the Synergy Effect in Multi-platform Firms:A Case Study of Alibaba's Multi-platform System

随着数字经济需求机会的不断拓展,以及平台企业自身资源和能力的持续积累,多平台发展已经成为平台经济的重要事实。然而,既有研究却并未就多平台现象的管理学合理性给出逻辑一致的解释。针对该研究缺口,本研究从资源相关性视角出发,基于对阿里巴巴多平台体系的案例研究,探索性地分析了多平台作为企业竞争优势来源的理论机理。研究发现:不同于传统多产品企业,多平台经济性的重要来源,是以跨业务资源互补性为起点的平台需求端协同和以联合资源互补性为起点的超加协同效应;前者依赖于网络效应、系统迭代和价值溢出,后者则依赖于不同资源维度下平台需求端协同效应的相互促进。本研究在拓展了多元化和平台战略理论的同时,也对中国平台企业管理实践具有启发。

In the digital economy era, platform strategy has attracted wide-ranging attention in the academic and business field. Previous studies in the field of platform strategy have produced fruitful results, however, these studies mainly focus on competition and ecosystem strategies in the single-platform context, hence they have not attached enough importance to the phenomenon of multi-platform. In recent years, a stylized fact is that a growing number of incumbent platform firms have employed the multi-platform strategy to enter into heterogeneous platform markets, by leveraging their distinctive resources and capabilities. This new landscape of incumbent platform firms’ strategic activity looks like a historical reappearance of the diversified expansion of traditional product manufacturing firms which happened decades ago. However, considering the multi-side-market role and the technical-architecture attribute of the platform, existing theories on diversification, which were built and developed in the context of traditional product manufacturing firms, cannot fully explain the rationale of multi-platform strategy. More specifically, traditional diversification theories rose from resource similarity, thus can hardly capture the synergy effect among heterogeneous multiple platforms(mainly referring to the demand-side synergy effect). Therefore, the purpose of this study is to clarify the rationale for the multi-platform strategy by extending or modifying the diversification theories which were developed in the soil of traditional multi-product firms.This study employs a case study of Alibaba’s multi-platform system to explore how platform firms establish their competitive advantages by employing a multi-platform strategy. Based on the perspective of resource relatedness, this study focuses on the demand-side synergy effect under two resources dimensions(transaction resources and innovation resources), linking the unique attributes of the platform itself. Then, the study identifies the specific strategies that Alibaba has employed to achieve multi-platform synergies. We found that the logic of multi-platform firm value creation and competitive advantages establishment is significantly different from traditional multi-product firm’s. Platform demand-side synergy effect based on cross-business resource complementarity and super-additive synergy effect based on joint-using resource complementarity play key roles in the logic of multi-platform firm competitive advantages establishment. The former relies on network effects, system iteration and value spillovers, while the latter relies on the mutual reinforcement of platform demand-side synergies under different resource dimensions.There are three theoretical contributions. First, this study induces the source and mechanism of the synergy effect in the multi-platform firm. Second, this study highlights the critical role of resource complementarity rather than resource similarity in multi-platform logic. Third, this study demonstrates the interpretability of the resource-based view in the context of digital platforms by focusing on the relationship among resources rather than the characteristics of resources themself. In practice, the findings of this study imply that incumbent platform firms need to prudently expand into heterogeneous platform markets, and also need to be aware of the significance of building an interconnected multi-platform system.Some key limitations of this study and opportunities for future research are identified. On the one hand, this study focuses on the positive impact of multi-platform synergies on platform firms’ competitiveness, but synergistic diseconomies that affect the equilibrium boundary for multi-platform expansion are also worthy of further exploration. It would be beneficial for building a more general multi-platform theory. On the other hand, multi-platform expansion may enable platform firms to restrict competition, resulting in platform monopoly and damage to social welfare. The issue of external institutional environment on multi-platform expansion constraints is also worthy of further exploration. It would be useful to promote the theoretical research of multi-platform strategy.