Study on Digital Platform Ecosystems and Customer Orientation published in the Journal of Business Research
The paper “Integrating Digital Platform Dynamics into Future Customer Orientation Research: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda,” written by Jasmin Kiefer, Carolin Castell, Sebastian Schubach, Jan Schumann, Lorenz Graf-Vlachy, and Andreas König and funded by the DFG Research Training Group 2720 “Digital Platform Ecosystems” has been accepted and will be forthcoming at the Journal of Business Research.
In the forthcoming paper, the authors address the need for an integrated perspective on customer orientation in the context of digital platforms. The paper argues that standard conceptualizations of customer orientation may be partially inapplicable in digital platform environments and that existing research has not yet comprehensively explored this topic.
The authors first identify four pivotal contradictions between extant customer orientation research and digital platforms literature, concerning central assumptions about value creation and capture. They then systematically review 30 years of customer orientation research, assessing 87 papers, to analyze whether and how scholars have acknowledged the contextual parameters of digital platforms.
The paper makes three key contributions. Firstly, it offers a systematic and comprehensive overview of how digital platforms’ contextual parameters affect customer orientation and its research, providing a holistic perspective that transcends current conceptual and empirical findings. Secondly, the authors extend prior reflections by identifying previously neglected contradictions between the ontological assumptions of customer orientation and digital platform research. These contradictions include the number of customer groups, the type of value creation, and the type of customer value contributions. Finally, the research agenda highlights novel domains for future customer orientation research, paving the way for cross-disciplinary studies at the intersection of marketing, strategy, and technology management.
Overall, this paper fills a critical gap in the literature by examining the impact of digital platform dynamics on customer orientation research and proposing a comprehensive research agenda for future studies in this domain.
The authors are grateful for the support from the DFG Research Training Group “Digital Platform Ecosystems” as well as for very helpful constructive feedback from Professor Ajay Kohli (Georgia Institute of Technology).