The Impact Of Complementors’ Reputation On Their Performance

Reputation is an intangible resource that affects the behavior of firms in structuring their strategies and their corresponding performance.However,few studies have analyzed the process mechanisms by which reputation affects firm performance,especially in the context of today’s platform-based ecosystems,where it is an important research proposition how participating firms that provide complementary resources and capabilities structure their platform entry strategies to enhance performance based on their organizational reputation,but existing studies have failed to contribute insights.Accordingly,this paper uses resource dependence theory as a perspective to investigate the role of the relationship between complementors’ reputation and complementors’ performance in the platform ecosystem,and suggests that the complementor’s entry strategy plays a mediating role in this process.To this end,this paper uses mini Programs embedded platform as a research scenario and demonstrates the relationship between complementors’ reputation,entry strategy,and complementors’ performance through empirical analysis.Specifically,this paper deconstructs complementors’ entry strategies into multi-homing strategies,functional substitution strategies,and multiple identity strategies,and focuses closely on the following questions:(1)What is the impact of complementors’ reputation on performance?(2)How do the three entry platform strategies play a mediating role in the process of complementors’ reputation affecting performance?The results found that(1)the reputation of complementor as an important intangible asset can effectively improve their performance.(2)Multi-hosting strategy plays a partially mediating role between complementors’ reputation and performance,namely,complementors with higher reputation tend to inhabit multiple platform ecosystems to expand their attraction channels and promote their performance development;(3)Multiple-identity strategy plays a partially mediating role between complementors’ reputation and performance,namely,complementors with higher reputation tend to expand their services by playing multiple roles in the same platform to market spectrum and contribute to their performance development.This study is expected to contribute to platform ecosystem research from the complementor player perspective and provide insights for complementary firms to improve their performance through strategy formulation.