DBM organized two guest lectures on 23 December, 2020. Two speakers, Professor Alain Chong and Assistant Professor Dr. Xiaodie Pu, from University of Nottingham Ningbo China presented their newly research to our staff and students respectively.  

Dr. Xiaodie Pu delivered her lecture on “Strategies for Digital Platform Owners to Enter Complementary Markets” in the morning. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor in Business Analytics at University of Nottingham Business School China.

Acting Programme Director of EBIS, Dr. Don Chai presents a souvenir to Dr. Xiaodie Pu

In this lecture, Dr. Pu and her research team investigated the dual role of digital platform owners. Platform ownerstake the role of transaction intermediation. They adopted reselling mode and private label entry mode to enter complementary markets to compete with others sellers. For example, Amazon and NetEase launch and sell its own brands. They also compared their research finding with Chinese E-Commerce companies, such as JD.com that have its self-operated store and directly sell goods to customers.

Based on an empirical study on Amazon.com, Dr. Pu indicates the sales performance, value creation and value capture are main considerations for platform owners’ decisions on entry mode selection.

Dr. Pu pointed out they explore the different characteristics of product spaces entered by Amazon using each entry mode. The results show that sales of complementaries’ product spaces have an inverted U-shape relationship with the likelihood of the platform owner using private-label mode to enter the product space, as compared to using reselling mode to entry. The inverted U-shape effect of product sales on a platform owner's entry mode choice will be flattened when the product space has high growth potential. This study contributes to the literature on platform-based markets by extending the research focus from single entry mode to various entry modes of digital platform owners, and providing richer understandings towards the platform owners’ competitive behaviors.

During the Q&A session, faculty of DBM enthusiastically asked questions and Dr. Pu gave the answers. At the end of this talk, motivated by Dr Don Chai, Professor Chong shared his editorial experiences and opinions on publishing research works in the top journals.

Dr. Pu in Q&A session

Prof. Chong discussed on publishing in the top journals