Educational Platform Providers

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In addition to that, the companies acknowledged the role of the platform owner to support them in achieving their goals by, for example, promoting their services on the platform. It seems that they do not require promotion, but it would positively affect their participation on the platform.

However, there is also small evidence that an unbalanced and non-transparent promotion can negatively affect their behaviour on the platform. From a technical perspective, it seemed that participation is positively affected by an open platform that supports a frictionless entry of different types of contents. However, the companies seemed to be willing to adjust their contents to the specifications of the platform if they see the value of joining the platform. In addition to the themes identified in academic literature, two further topics could be found that potentially affects complementors’ participation. That said, it seems they require a platform which is designed in a user-friendly way.

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With respect to competition with other complementors on the platform, all participants seemed to stand neutral towards it acknowledging that the “best content wins” (EP III, personal communication, May 10, 2019, 14:50.400). However, EPP I and EPP III raised concerns to promoting strategies of the platform owner that are not transparent by nature. Hence, they expected the platform owner to openly reveal the requirements of how to get highly promoted on the platform.

That said, the participants suggested that an appropriate requirement should be the complementors’ performance and quality. EPP II, for example, proposed to promote the best content providers on a monthly basis. According to EPP II, this is something that is not available on other platforms such as YouTube.

From a technical perspective, the participants valued an easy and frictionless way, which matches the formats they currently use on their own platforms. In addition to that, EPP II and EPP III stated that reshaping their course contents highly depends on the monetary outcome they can achieve on MILLA. Once again, this stresses the significant importance of their economic performance on the platform.

In addition to the potentially important themes identified in academic literature, new topics could be explored through the interviews. It became apparent that the participants not only value a high reach of customers on MILLA’s platform, but also strive to convert those users into own customers.

To do so, EPP I and EPP III might provide teaser content on MILLA, while offering exclusive content on their own platform. Thus, they want to benefit from the high reach and distinct user groups on MILLA.

Further, the interviews revealed that the participants value a platform that is designed in a user-friendly way. As for example, EPP II clearly highlighted the importance of a good UI/UX of the platform. It seems that this might be a critical factor for him to actually join the platform, as he pointed out: “You cannot say Daniel Jung, Simple Club etc. come to my platform and you have a horrible UI/UX” (May 20, 2019, 20:26.180). This is in line with EPP III, who expects the platform owner to support them by building a “great platform” (May 10, 2019, 17:10.760) on which they put their content on. According to EPP III, it is not sufficient to only offer good content on a platform,

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which is not well-designed from a technical perspective since this might lead to a poor user experience and, consequently, users abandoning the platform.

The aspect of providing user data has been mentioned as another way of how the platform owner can support and encourage them to further innovate on the platform. According to EPP III, it would be “super helpful to provide as much as possible data for us so that we can analyse user behaviour”

(May 10, 2019, 10:25.890). That said, EPP III additionally pointed out the relevance of user data if they are not achieving their goals on MILLA. Thus, they would analyse user behaviour in order to improve their own performance on the platform. This is in line with EPP II, who pointed out that the provision of user data would support him in achieving his goals on the platform.

4.1.2.1 Summary of Findings

To sum up, it became apparent that the motivations and incentives of EPPs are primarily revenue driven. The findings indicate that their incentives are mainly linked to their economic performance on the platform, which means that non-monetary incentives might not have a strong impact on their participation on the platform. If they cannot achieve economic goals directly on the platform, they strive to leverage the user base and try to convert them into own customers and thus, they would still benefit financially from their participation on the platform. In addition, they raised concerns about a potential market entry by the platform owner if this would lead to decreasing monetary outcome. It appeared that the promotion strategy might decrease innovation efforts if it is perceived as unfair and non-transparent. From a technical perspective, the EPPs required an open platform, which assures an easy upload of their contents. They further mentioned to be willing to put efforts into adjusting their courses to the technical specifications of the platform if they perceive economic benefits. With that being said, the relevance of the economic aspect became apparent once again. In addition to that, it seemed that the EPPs expect to find a platform with an excellent user experience. The EPPs might be discouraged if the platform owner is not able to provide a well-designed platform. Moreover, it could be observed that the provision of user data is perceived as an additional support to the EPPs and thus might positively affect their participation.

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