An Empirical Study of Digital Platform Scope
Publication Date
7-7-2026
Abstract
Currently operating multisided digital platforms vary significantly in the range of activities that they support for their different participants, which we define as their scope. However, there is little research on the actual scope of these platforms, and on the effectiveness of each platform’s choice of scope. Also, while there has been substantial discussion of different types of platforms, there is no good reference model for evaluating the scope of a digital platform in terms of possible activity types. We address this gap in this paper by empirically examining the scope of 80 established platforms in terms of a novel Platform Activity Framework. Our empirical analysis leads to the following observations: (1) our dataset contains three distinct clusters of platforms, each focusing on activities within one of the activity types in our framework; (2) some platforms do support activities outside their primary activity type, and (3) for some clusters, there are substantial differences in scope even among their constituent platforms. Drilling down into these observations, we gain several useful insights that can help platform planners and platform design researchers.
Document Type
Article
Keywords
Digital platforms, Platform Scope, Platform Types, Platform Activities, Platform focus areas
Disciplines
Business Administration, Management, and Operations
Language
English
