Micro-foundations of Platform-complementor Coopetition

Superseding the traditional view of cooperation and competition as separate constructs, coopetition research gained traction in the last two decades. Recently scholars have voiced the need to disentangle the different levels of analysis and to explore the micro-foundations of coopetition. Filling in this gap, we study the intensity of platform-complementor coopetition, as a function of past commitment and primed regret. We theorize that, when a partner platform intensifies competition, the complementor’s escalation of commitment renders the cooperation with such platform more likely, possibly by decreasing competition with other platforms the complementor is involved. Nevertheless, keeping the past commitment equal, we expect a primed regret to decrease the extent of cooperation with the competing platform and possibly, to increase competition with other platforms, hence also increase coopetition with the focal platform. We find evidence of the expected effects and we further elaborate on the underlying mechanisms.