The platform owner and third-party sellers in a hybrid retail platform cooperate to generate consumer value and improve the platform’s overall competitiveness. The platform owner is generally believed to be more powerful and significantly impacts third-party sellers’ welfare. However, as these third-party sellers expand their businesses to survive on the platform, many have started to enter the platform owner’s product markets to increase sales. Our research develops an empirical framework to address the issue that what kinds of product are more suitable for third-party sellers to enter and how does this entry affect the platform. Using a logit regression model, a combination of propensity score matching and difference-in-difference model, our results reveal that third-party sellers are more likely to target products with low prices, high demand and less operating costs. Moreover, third-party sellers’ entry significantly decreases the platform owner’s sales but increases the platform’s overall sales. Furthermore, large third-party sellers’ entry has a stronger negative effect on the platform owner’s sales. These findings provide crucial theoretical and managerial implications for online retail platform operations.

混合零售平台中的平台所有者和第三方卖方合作，以产生消费者价值并提高平台的整体竞争力。通常认为平台所有者功能更强大，并且会严重影响第三方卖方的福利。但是，随着这些第三方卖方扩展业务以在平台上生存，许多第三方卖方已开始进入平台所有者的产品市场以增加销售。我们的研究建立了一个经验框架来解决以下问题：哪种产品更适合第三方卖家进入，以及这种进入如何影响平台。使用logit回归模型，倾向得分匹配和差异差异模型相结合，我们的结果表明，第三方卖家更有可能定位低价商品，需求高，运营成本低。此外，第三方卖方的进入大大降低了平台所有者的销售额，但增加了平台的整体销售额。此外，大型第三方卖家的进入对平台所有者的销售产生更大的负面影响。这些发现为在线零售平台的运营提供了至关重要的理论和管理意义。