How can a digital platform provider successfully secure users in its early stage to build an ecosystem? The purpose of this paper is to explore this issue through a case study on the deployment of the digital platform service RecordFarm and identifies the reasons behind its successful market access, overcoming the chronic chicken-egg problem in a two-sided market.
The study empirically analyses the core user groups’ diffusion and usage rates by using a susceptible-infectious-recovery model of an epidemic based on a user survey and extensive archival data from the RecordFarm database.
The study identifies two important early stage characteristics for a business platform to be successful: the core users’ activities on the platform are a critical element for the network’s expansion and usage, and user relationships are more important than user contents on the digital platform.
This study confirms that organic interactions through active behaviours, such as visit frequency, uploading contents, and comment activities, are core elements for a successful digital platform to settle in the market early in the face of the difficulties of a two-sided market.
