A Profit Framework Model for Digital Platforms Based on Value Sharing and Resource Complementarity

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for inviting me to review this interesting paper. It discusses the key features of digital platform. Overall, the manuscript has suffered from a lack of clear research contributions. The structure of the paper is not clear. The research objectives are not well articulated. Specifically, I suggest the following modifications:

1.      In the abstract section, the research contributions require elucidation and clarification. For example, in which field does this research contribute to?

2.      In the introduction, the pervasiveness of digital platform is well explained. However, it lacks of citations and literature support. How would you build up your argument based on your own thought without literature support?

3.      In the introduction, it would be helpful to spell out the contributions this study is making. It is neither very clear to what field/s this study is contributing to (several ones are mentioned in the introduction), nor what the specific contributions are. It would also be helpful to better introduce the study in terms of its methods used including a justification. I think the literature gap should be addressed here.

(1)   In page 2-3, you compare with western and Chinese scholars, why? Is there any specific reason to separate these two streams? It is not only listing out these studies, you should synergize the key findings instead.

(2)   What theories are you focusing on, such as what is the key mechanism of digital innovation?

(3)   Is this a conceptual paper? What are the research questions?

(4)   The structure of the whole paper is not elaborated.

4.      The section 2 “The paradox between theory and reality” is quite confusing. What is the paradox (paradox is defined as two competing or contradictory demands (Gaim, 2018)? However, the author (s) should be careful about the statement such as “This huge gap between theory and reality forces us to find a new and feasible path for corporate profitability, which is not only the need for the development of the company itself, but also the need for the development of the times.” How would your study take this into consideration, or solve this challenge? What about resource-based view, dynamic capability theory, which are widely used in the literature?

5.      Figure 1 is not informative. What are the key players in the platform (suppliers, customers, complementors, third-parties, etc.)

6.      It is not convincing that there is no literature support in section 4. How would you derive these results? Figure 2 is not clear.

7.      In the discussion, the research contributions to literature need to be better elaborated. I can see that some of contributions are being identified. However, I would expect the authors to better argue and articulate how their findings contribute to existing literature and more specifically, which field(s) of literature that they are contributing to? In this section the author(s) also should discuss how results of the study support and deviate from the previous literature cited in Section 2 &3.

8.      The managerial implications need revisiting to ensure that they flow logically from the specific reported results, rather than being presented as a generalised ‘catch-all’ discussion.

9.      Minor issues:

·         “This combination of stability and liquidity results in a special organizational structure for the data platform, which we call a hybrid structure here”. What is data platform?

·         “We also know why consumers and user companies link to this platform”. What do you mean by user companies?

·         Value co-creation for whom?

10.  The manuscript would benefit from a professional proof-reading/editing service.

Author Response

 

 

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The article is well written and interesting. It represents a sound piece of research.

Author Response

No suggest 

Reviewer 3 Report

 

The focus of the article is unclear. The author talks about digital innovation and about digital platforms, and much of the article (points 3 and 4) is about digital platforms.

The concept of digital platforms is vague and not properly characterized. Also, the concept of digital innovation is little explored and therefore not properly framed and related to digital platforms.

In a large part of the article (point 4, with 5 pages) the author limits himself to dissertate on aspects he considers important, without presenting any reasoning supported by consulted authors or studies.

The author does not highlight the methodology used to identify the items that are addressed in point 4.

The conclusions are supported essentially on aspects that were introduced by the author and not duly substantiated by studies developed by consulted authors.

The bibliography is scarce and does not present documents after 2019.

Author Response

Add the literature support in the paper.

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

The author(s) should be congratulated on the very thorough revision that has been undertaken. However, I still have two concerns: 1. What are the theoretical contributions? 2. Why classifying western and eastern scholars? More work is needed to make this a coherent paper.

 

 

Author Response

1. What are the theoretical contributions?

From the perspective of value sharing, this paper explores the profit mechanism of platform enterprises.The research subject of this paper is a composite platform enterprise, such as WeChat, which takes into account the functions of chat, payment, and financial management at the same time; Taobao takes into account the functions of shopping and payment.Through case studies, this paper analyzes how such platform companies are profitable and how to realize the innovative path of multi-module integration.

2. Why classifying western and eastern scholars? 

Because there are obvious differences between the empirical research subjects of Chinese and Western scholars. Western scholars often choose companies such as Google and Amazon as research subjects when they study platform companies.They are all typical single-module platforms, and other Google projects can be independent of web-based keyword business, such as Google Cloud, and Google Maps. eBay, Amazon's payment platform, isn't Amazon's only payment channel, either.However, most of the platform companies studied by Chinese scholars are of a composite type. For example, Taobao, Tmall and Hema have formed an online and offline sales network under the collaboration of Alipay. Alipay is the only payment method on this network.Due to the differences in the enterprise models of Chinese and foreign platforms, there are also differences in research between Chinese and foreign scholars.Foreign scholars carry out theoretical innovation with the idea of technological innovation.Chinese scholars take the Chinese phenomenon as a starting point and pay attention to the evolution path of platform enterprises.

Reviewer 3 Report

Include in points 5, 5.1, 5.2 and 5.3 authors that support the model presented

Author Response

I added these contents in the paper,and highlighted them.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf