User-perceived value and network effects: a study about environment-oriented business platforms
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2020-02-14
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Orsato, Renato J.
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The emergence of business platforms has been motivated by cost reduction of data processing combined with the diffusion of the internet and mobile technology. Due to the potential to generate network effects, this technological improvement associated with sustainability goals became a key driver for business model innovation. While the literature about network effects addresses the concept of value only superficially, studies about customer-perceived value in digital economies are inconclusive. Overall, how these research fields relate to each other remains unclear. Therefore, this study focused on the interface of the literature about business platforms, network effects, and customer-perceived value, in an environmental sustainability scenario, with particular attention to the impacts of food waste. The research addressed the following question: How do business users perceive value in the presence of network effects on environment-oriented business platforms? Based on multiple case studies of Brazilian platforms, the results demonstrate that users of environment-oriented business platforms (called eco-platforms) perceive value through nine dimensions of economic orientation and five dimensions of strategic orientation. Overall, economic orientation offers one-off benefits/sacrifices during each transaction, while the strategic orientation presupposes a longterm relationship between platform owners and their users. In both aspects, benefits must outweigh the sacrifices to improve the quality of interactions within platforms (BPs and ecoBPs), which results in positive network effects. The findings provide evidence for platform owners to attract and retain buyers and suppliers due to the stimulus of certain benefits and minimization of sacrifices.