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Research Article

Classification and Evolutionary Path Analysis of Digital Platform Companies

Kim, Miri1 · Kim, Sangyu1 · Park, Suhyeon1 · Ha, Byeongcheon1 · Kim, Gilseon1

1 Sogang Business Research Institute

Published: January 2024 · Vol. 53, No. 1 · pp. 27-56

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17287/kmr.2024.53.1.27

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Abstract

This study presents a classification framework to understand digital platform firms from the technologicalsocial system perspective and analyzes the typology of their evolutionary trajectory. The typology framework for the evolutionary trajectory of the digital platform firm is developed from two criteria: the platform firms provide “what(online goods vs. offline goods)” and “how(connective leverage vs. innovative leverage)” to platform users. To examine the evolution of platform firms, we collected information of digital goods released by 35 domestic and international digital platform firms. As a result of the study, we reveal that a digital platform firm gave rise to as a form of (.) or (l) and it can take six types of evolutionary paths for which we symbolize them using 6 Korean alphabets (., l, ㅡ, ㅅ, ㄴ, ㅁ). They are pronounced as ‘jeom’, ‘i’, ‘eu’, ‘siot’, ‘nieun’ and ‘mieum’. There were Netflix, Twitter, Carrot Market, Naver, Musinsa, and Kakao as representative firms for each type. The typology framework for digital platform firms proposed in this study enables clear and sophisticated semantic classification and helps understand the evolutionary trajectory as dynamic flows of firm growth.
Keywords: digital platform firmsclassification of digital platform firmsevolutionary trajectory