Abstract
With the rapid development of information technology, third-party platforms have emerged and become the important channels to promote collaborations among manufacturing enterprises. Under this background, this paper focuses on a third-party platform whose multilateral users are manufacturers, suppliers, and logistics providers. There exist various cross-side network effects (i.e., CNEs) and same-side network effects (i.e., SNEs) among users (including manufacturers, suppliers, and logistics providers) at different development stages of the platform, which may affect the multi-value chain collaboration of users positively or negatively. By building a system dynamics model, this paper examines the interactions of the network effects and analyzes their impacts on the multi-value chain collaboration and platform’s revenues. Then, the key factors that affect the network effect interactions are explored. The results show that the network effect interactions are significant in the early development stage of the platform. The growth of the SNEs of suppliers and logistics providers has significant impacts on their own CNEs and profits. Interestingly, the increase of manufacturers’ SNEs can affect the CNEs of their own and suppliers simultaneously, which may decrease the profits of other participants but does not change their own profits. Affected by multiple network effects, the platform needs to implement a differentiated pricing strategy for its users. That is, the platform should charge suppliers and logistics providers access fee while giving manufacturers a certain subsidy. These findings can provide some valuable insights to the operation of the third-party platform.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to acknowledge the support by the National Key Research and Development Program (Grant number 2018YFB1701502) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant number 2019CDCGJG332), as well as the contributions from all partners of the mentioned project.
Funding
This work was supported by [the National Key Research and Development Program] (Grant number [2018YFB1701502]) and [the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities] (Grant number [2019CDCGJG332]).
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All the authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection and analysis were performed by [RS], [XZ], [YL], [YD] and [WL]. The first draft of the manuscript was written by [RS], and all the authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All the authors read and approved the final manuscript. Conceptualization: [RS], [XZ], [YL], [YD], [WL]; methodology: [RS], [XZ], [YL]; formal analysis and investigation: [RS], [XZ], [YL], [YD], [WL]; writing—original draft preparation: [RS], [XZ], [YL], [YD], [WL]; writing—review and editing: [RS], [XZ], [YL], [YD]; funding acquisition: [XZ]; resources: [RS], [XZ]; supervision: [RS]; [XZ].
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Sui, R., Zhang, X., Liu, Y. et al. Simulation modeling and analysis on the network effects of multi-value chain based on the third-party manufacturing platform. Soft Comput 28, 235–252 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-023-09102-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-023-09102-y