A Framework of the Value Co-Creation Cycle in Platform Businesses: An Exploratory Case Study

Platform businesses, linking producers and consumers, have emerged as a very important industry. Meanwhile, value co-creation has become one of the critical issues concerning the operation of platform enterprises and the focus of researchers in this area. Platform businesses usually need to strengthen the interactions between all participants to maximize the commercial value. However, the majority of the literature has concentrated on the "platform business-consumer" interaction only, i.e., both "platform business-producer" and "platform producer-consumer" interactions have been almost completely neglected. Consequently, this study aims to fill the research gap by investigating "all-around interactions" and the relationships between the interaction with the value co-creation performance. A holistic framework of the value co-creation cycle is developed and validated. One of the largest platform businesses in Taiwan was examined, and Google Analytics (GA) code was embedded into its information system for data generation. The results confirmed the proposed framework and hypotheses. The study concludes that platform businesses need to gain insight into producers and consumers through data tracking and analysis as well as to provide innovative services that elevate satisfaction, user loyalty, and usage frequency, with a final goal of establishing a cycle of value co-creation.