Maximilian Jakob Dexheimer

This case study focuses on the creation and management of Daimler's mobility ecosystem in China. It analyzes how the German car manufacturer rolled out its ecosystem strategy in China and managed to establish a car-sharing platform with multiple partners. Daimler adapted its strategy from a station-based to free-floating car sharing and had to deal with different ecosystem partners to succeed over time. The case discusses the underlying business models, competitive strategies to respond to local rivals, and the impacts of future megatrends on Daimler's 'car2go' ecosystem. It ends with a discussion of future challenges for Daimler, including possible collaboration with BMW's 'ReachNow' and Geely's ride hailing service Cao Cao. The case is suited to discuss the benefits and challenges of ecosystem strategies from a strategic management angle, both for undergraduate and MBA classes.

In many platform-based markets, thousands of third-party complementors offer their products. To align their activities and augment the value of their ecosystems, platform owners have several strategic options. In this dissertation, I study an empirically prevalent strategy for governing platform-based markets: the selective endorsement of complements via certification. Previous research has found that complement certification increases platform value by reducing customers search costs and supporting high-potential products, which may otherwise go unnoticed. However, there are critical knowledge gaps regarding the strategic role of certification in platform-based markets, particularly how platform owners select which complements to endorse, what factors influence these decisions, and how the complementor ecosystem responds to certification. Using a dataset of app developer populations from Apples App Store, I combine and extend prior work on platform governance and certification to address these gaps. First, I employ a novel theory-building approach based on machine learning methods to detect patterns in the platform owners selection criteria. I find certification is awarded not only to encourage users to discover new apps but also to induce desired behaviors among developers. Second, I examine how the complementor ecosystem responds to certification. Using a neural-network-based text-embedding algorithm, I cluster similar apps in their respective app category. I find that certification has a generative effect on developers, which increases their innovation efforts after a competing app has been certified. My results also suggest that developers adjust their pricing strategies in response to certification. However, these effects vary across app categories, contingent on their level of competitive crowding. Together, these studies build a framework for future research studying certification as a strategy to govern complementor activity on platform-based markets. I discuss the implications of my findings for the literature on platform governance, certification, and studies using machine learning methods in strategy research.