The Chicken or the Egg Problem : strategies for populating multi-sided business platforms

Platform businesses such as Google, Amazon, VISA and Apple are major players in today's economy. But how do platform businesses start? Why would a customer visit Amazon Marketplace if there were no products, and why would businesses sell products on Amazon if there were no customers? This is a critical challenge for new platforms, and is known as the Chicken or the Egg Problem. This paper explores both successful and unsuccessful previous attempts to solve this challenge, identifies critical strategies that were used, and outlines recommendations for future platform businesses.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Engineering and Management Program

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Cunningham, Andrew, S.M. (Andrew James) Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Michael A. Cusumano.

• Engineering and Management Program.
• System Design and Management Program.

Statement dc:rights

• MIT theses may be protected by copyright. Please reuse MIT thesis content according to the MIT Libraries Permissions Policy, which is available through the URL provided.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/132815

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/132815