Strategies in online food delivery ecosystems. Characterization and evolution over time

Master's Thesis from the year 2020 in the subject Business economics - Review of Business Studies, grade: 1,0, Technical University of Berlin, language: English, abstract: The aim of this paper is to complement existing research on dynamic ecosystem strategies in the context of platforms. Two research questions will be answered: 1) How do competitive strategies of rival platform-based ecosystems evolve over time? 2) How can competitive strategies of rival platform-based ecosystems be characterized? A longitudinal, multiple-case study has been conducted. This multiple-case study is pursuing an inductive, theory-building approach as there is limited theoretical foundation on strategies in platform-based ecosystems. Five online food delivery ecosystems in the German market are analyzed. The business ecosystem perspective provides a holistic view on the interdependence across organizations. Yet, existing literature reveals little theoretical foundation with respect to ecosystem strategies in the context of platforms. Prior research includes a static view on ecosystem strategies leading to characterizations such as the 'component' or 'system' strategy. Recently, a newly presented strategy, the bottleneck strategy, provides a dynamic view on ecosystem strategies. Unfortunately, much literature exclusively study cooperation and competition between ecosystem partners, however, neglects to explain how and why cooperation and competition between rival ecosystems generally occurs.