Technological platforms such as hardware or systems form platform ecosystems, which are communities orchestrated by platform providers, outside complementors such as software providers, and consumers. Previous studies have suggested that a winner-takes-all situation among platform ecosystems could be induced by interactions between complementors and consumers. However, our observation of the Japanese video game market over the last 30 years indicated that complementors (i.e., software providers) usually seek to avoid winner-takes-all situations and, instead, promote symbiotic situations. Using the Lotka–Volterra equations from biology as a reference, we developed a model to understand the competitive behavior of complementors among platform ecosystems. We used a 19-year (1996–2015) dataset on the Japanese video game market and confirmed that complementors took as many actions to create symbiotic situations as they took to create winner-takes-all situations, if not more. Our results show that such actions by complementors are influenced by several factors of platform ecosystems. This study also suggests that certain complementors that contribute to symbiotic co-existence within a platform ecosystem could emerge as keystone firms/companies. These complementors could contribute to the sustainability of platform-based markets and facilitate the co-existence of multiple platform ecosystems.

Influencer marketing on social media platforms has garnered considerable attention in recent years. This study focuses on beauty and fashion influencers on Instagram and examines how changes in the category of influencer posts, value of influencer posts, and levels of parasocial interaction (PSI) correlate with parasocial relationships (PSRs). A regression analysis of data from 215 influencers and 7285 posts in the Japanese market revealed that enhancing PSIs between influencers and followers is associated with stronger PSRs with followers. An increase in the value of an influencer’s posts was also correlated with stronger PSRs. Furthermore, the interaction between an increase in the value of an influencer’s posts and an increase in PSIs was significantly associated with stronger PSRs. Moreover, when PSIs intensify, an increase in posts that directly promote products, clothing coordination, and influencers’ style introductions is positively and significantly correlated with the strength of PSRs between influencers and followers. Influencers can use these insights to develop strategies for effectively building stronger PSRs.

This study analyzed the changes in consumers' use dynamics of general e-commerce (EC) platforms (e.g., Amazon.com) during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. We initially supposed that the significance of consumer benefits, including pricing, product variety, and delivery services, on the platforms would decrease and the value of using an EC platform itself would increase due to the pandemic, based on which we conducted a comparative analysis of questionnaire data from 2,119 Japanese consumers who use general EC platforms. The data were obtained in November 2018 and January 2021. Our analysis has two parts, the first designed as a conjoint analysis to statistically analyze the changes in consumers' sense of values for pricing, variety of goods, stability and quality of delivery services, and basic benefits of using EC platforms; and the second part designed to statistically analyze the changes in comprehensive items when using EC platforms. We categorized the dataset into men and women and further clustered them based on the patterns of consumers' sense of factors when using EC platform. The analysis results were inconsistent with our initial supposition, in that a non-negligible proportion of consumer clusters showed an increase in the significance of factors, including pricing, product variety, and delivery service, and a decrease in the basic benefits of using EC platforms. Regarding the results of the analysis of comprehensive items, the only commonly observed change for most clusters of both men and women was an increase in the use of package drop. The results indicate that changes in consumers’ sense of using EC platforms due to the pandemic were not as simple as supposed because the pandemic caused various changes in the need mechanism of consumers of EC platforms.

Recently, smart home products have shown signs of rapid development and increasing awareness of smart home platforms. In order to make smart home enterprises enter the era of Smart Home 2.0, it is necessary to consider the elements related to smart home platforms. This study examines the relationship between consumers’ value perception and the platform ecosystem theory and how this relationship contributes to their perception of smart home products’ value. This study aims to reveal the influence of smart home platform elements on the value perception of consumers regarding consumers’ perception of the smart home products’ value. To achieve this goal, an online survey (n = 595) was implemented to collect data from Japanese respondents. The analytical results presented in this study indicated that consumers, who sense the value of modularization of smart home products and inter-consumer connectivity, can sense the value of smart home products. In addition, consumers who can perceive the value of a platform service can indirectly feel the value of smart home products through modularity and inter-consumer connectivity. The results presented in this study provide new insights into product development in Smart Home 2.0.

Physical intermediary firms, such as logistics firms, are the foundation of marketplace platform ecosystems. This study introduces the case of a delivery crisis caused by the withdrawal of major logistics firms from the Japanese marketplace platform. To address such a problem, this study considers the application of an “ecosystem strategy”. We define an ecosystem strategy in this situation, as “the strategy by which the platform owner cooperates with logistics firms to standardize logistics services and provides a platform system to improve cooperation among them”. We constructed an agent-based simulation system customized by a dataset of Japanese platform-based markets to test the effectiveness of the proposed strategy. The results indicate that the introduction of the ecosystem strategy postponed the start of the collapse. It also increased the number of platform users by roughly 1.10 times and increased the total profits of logistics firms about 1.22 times. Additionally, it removed the trade-off relationship between platform users and the profits of logistics firms and allowed the maximization of both. This study contributed to the research stream of platform ecosystems by defining an ecosystem strategy, including physical intermediary firms, and verifying the effectiveness of the strategy for ecosystem evolution and sustainability.