The success of platform companies often depends on their ability to “scale” their customer and supplier base. Existing studies have focused on a variety of approaches that platforms may use to scale but have not systematically considered that platforms might acquire other companies as part of this growth strategy. In this paper, we study the acquisition patterns of digital platform companies and contrast these with the acquisition patterns of digital non-platform companies. We find that platform companies acquire earlier (shortly after founding) when compared with non-platform companies, and they often first acquire competing platform companies from the same market niche. As platform companies mature, they begin to acquire non-platform companies from other market niches. This contrasts with how acquisitions are made by non-platform companies, as shown in our analysis.

中文翻译：

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平台公司何时收购谁？了解收购在平台公司成长中的作用

平台公司的成功往往取决于他们“扩大”客户和供应商基础的能力。现有研究侧重于平台可用于扩展的各种方法，但并未系统地考虑平台可能收购其他公司作为该增长战略的一部分。在本文中，我们研究了数字平台公司的收购模式，并将其与数字非平台公司的收购模式进行了对比。我们发现，与非平台公司相比，平台公司收购得更早（成立后不久），而且他们往往首先收购来自同一市场利基的竞争平台公司。随着平台公司的成熟，他们开始从其他细分市场收购非平台公司。这与非平台公司的收购方式形成鲜明对比，