Digital Platform Complementors and the Number of Product Features: Evidence from the Apple iOS App Store

Abstract

This paper explores the understudied question of how the number of product features that a digital platform complementor adds to a product is associated with its performance. Specifically, by integrating consumer behaviour literature into platform research, this paper focuses on three key performance dimensions considered as important for digital platform complementors. Considering the distinctive characteristics of digital platforms, this paper conceptualizes how additional features affect consumer acquisition, consumer retention, and product monetization of a digital platform complementor. This research question is empirically examined in the context of a health and fitness mobile platform in the US Apple iOS App Store, and the panel data analyses are complemented with a randomized online experiment to mitigate endogeneity concerns and lend further credence to the findings. This paper enhances platform research by unravelling an underexplored yet essential topic—how many features a digital platform complementor should include to achieve superior performance and by distinguishing among various key performance measurements on digital platforms.