Digital enabler and value integration: revealing the expansion engine of digital marketplace

ABSTRACT

Recently, we have witnessed many startup companies across the world gain a new capability in expanding their scope of businesses in terms of area of coverage and diversity of products/services offered very quickly. This capability is achieved through a well-orchestrated collaboration in offering attractive values to customers. One common thing that startups apply to generate value is by integrating values offered by their collaborators with values generate through a digital enabler so that customers can easily access and enjoy the integrated values. Customers appreciate integrated values accessed through a digital enabler. In addition, they also enjoy a growing value option that giving them plenty of choices in one basket offered by a digital enabler. The objective of this paper is to introduce a business ecosystem framework that can be used to construct and explain any business ecosystem, especially digital marketplace business ecosystems and their core expansion strategies. This paper offers a new paradigm in viewing digital marketplace or digital platform through a tandem concept digital enabler and values integration.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital business ecosystem
• two-sided markets
• transaction cost economy
• value exchange

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Universiti Brunei Darussalam [grant number UBD/RSCH/1.8/FICBF(b)/2018/003].

Notes on contributors

Mohammad Nabil Almunawar

Dr Mohammad Nabil Almunawar is currently an associate professor at School of Business and Economics, Universiti of Brunei Darussalam (UBDSBE), Brunei Darussalam. He was the former dean of UBDSBE. He received his bachelor's degree in 1983 from Bogor Agricultural University, Indonesia, master's degree (MSc) from the Department of Computer Science, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada in 1991, and Ph.D. from the University of New South Wales in 1998. Dr. Almunawar has published more than 100 papers in refereed journals, books, book chapters, encyclopaedias, and international conference proceedings. He has more than 30 years of teaching experience in information systems. His overall research interests include applications of IT in management, e-business/commerce, digital marketplace/platform, digital business ecosystem, health informatics, information security, and cloud computing. Currently, he focuses his research on digital transformation, digital marketplace, digital platform, and digital business ecosystem.

Muhammad Anshari

Dr Muhammad Anshari is researcher and academic staff at Universiti Brunei Darussalam School of Business & Economics. His professional experience started when he was IT Business Analyst at Astra International and Lecturer at State Islamic University Yogyakarta Indonesia. He was research fellow at National Taiwan University (Jan–Dec, 2014) funded by The Government Republic of China (Taiwan) and also research fellow at King Saud University – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 2009.