Purpose With the rapid development of the digital economy, building platform ecosystems has become a new driving force for advancing productivity development and accelerating digitalization. Effective relationship management is an important source of value creation for enterprises to gain competitive advantage. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relationship between platform-dependent enterprises and platform owners, and to study its impact on value creation. Design/methodology/approach Based on resource dependence theory, this study characterizes the relationship between platform-dependent enterprises and platform owners as one of complementarity and interdependence. Drawing on service-dominant logic, the analysis focuses on the economic and technological value created by platform-dependent enterprises. Using developers in the Chinese iOS App Store as the research sample, this study examines the impact of the relationship between platform-dependent enterprises and platform owners on value creation, as well as the situational effects of ecosystem experiences. Findings The results show that complementary relationships significantly contribute to both economic and technological value creation of platform-dependent firms, and ecological experience enhances their contribution. Dependency relationships have significant inhibitory effects on both economic and technological value creation of platform-dependent firms, and ecological experience enhances their inhibitory effects. Originality/value The findings deepen the understanding of the relationship between platform-dependent firms and platform owners, reveal the mechanism of its influence on the value creation of platform-dependent firms, and provide new evidence and experience for promoting the value creation of platform-dependent firms.
Ren et al. (Mon,) studied this question.