Customer behavior and adoption · Empirical analysis of Amazon's entry into third-party sellers' product spaces using Amazon marketplace data; entry targeting, seller growth effort, subsequent seller growth, consumer demand and shipping costs were examined.
Competing with complementors: An empirical look at Amazon.com
Feng Zhu, Qihong Liu (2018). Competing with complementors: An empirical look at Amazon.com. Strategic Management Journal. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.2932
Plain-English take
Amazon was more likely to enter successful product spaces but less likely to enter spaces requiring greater seller effort; entry discouraged affected sellers' later growth while increasing consumer demand and reducing shipping costs.
How much weight to give this
2/5 Evidence needs cautious interpretation
The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.
Empirical analysis of Amazon's entry into third-party sellers' product spaces using Amazon marketplace data; entry targeting, seller growth effort, subsequent seller growth, consumer demand and shipping costs were examined.
Amazon.com marketplace, third-party sellers and product spaces.
Check comparison conditions and analysis in the paper.
Publisher record checked; full-text methods were not verified.
Double-blind? Blinding details were not established from the checked publisher page.
Research question
What the authors investigated
What does competing with complementors: an empirical look at amazon.com show about customer behavior or marketing outcomes?
Design
Empirical analysis of Amazon's entry into third-party sellers' product spaces using Amazon marketplace data; entry targeting, seller growth effort, subsequent seller growth, consumer demand and shipping costs were examined.
Sample and setting
Amazon.com marketplace, third-party sellers and product spaces.
Reported result
What the study found
Amazon was more likely to enter successful product spaces but less likely to enter spaces requiring greater seller effort; entry discouraged affected sellers' later growth while increasing consumer demand and reducing shipping costs.
This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.
Scope and transfer
Limitations to keep in view
Conservative inference: a single marketplace and Amazon's distinctive governance/operations constrain generalization to other platforms; the abstract does not enumerate author-stated limitations. Full-text methods and correction history were not independently checked.
Possible founder application
Use this paper as evidence about competing with complementors: an empirical look at amazon.com in the stated context; compare its population, treatment and outcome with your own decision.
Evidence access
Publisher page; full-text availability varies and was not established.
Candidate study metadata and reported evidence were cross-checked against a direct publisher-page retrieval; the full article was not independently reviewed.
If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.