Towards a Taxonomy of Impact Factors for Digital Platform Pricing

Abstract

Solving the chicken-or-egg problem and leveraging value contributing actors on the platform is crucial to establish dynamic platform-based ecosystems. A digital platform provider is challenged to manage multilateral platform architecture and governance mechanisms to establish an attractive platform-based ecosystem to foster third-party complementors to join. One of the key issues while establishing a platform-based ecosystem remains the decision about an adequate pricing model. Despite a large number of publications on platform governance, detailed pricing model analyses remain rare. In this explorative paper, we conduct a literature review, studying 62 relevant papers to explore the pricing impact factors to create a foundation for future research of price models in the under-researched setting of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). The most relevant pricing factors and their distinctive characteristics are summed up in a multi-dimensional taxonomy. The developed taxonomy includes 13 impact factors and 38 characteristics of platform pricing. Our findings enable the decomposition and understanding of price models for their future improvement.