Digital technology use decisions by micro- and small-sized complementors in ecosystems: The influence of subjective norms

Abstract

Ecosystems host supporting complementors who offer digital technologies to user-facing complementors. By focusing on the platform sponsor, the existing literature has scarcely considered why the predominantly micro- and small-sized user-facing complementors intend to use such technology and thus diffuse it in the ecosystem in a bottom-up manner. Using the theory of planned behavior, we identify the factors that influence the use of product review solicitation services by German-speaking Amazon Marketplace sellers via semi-structured interviews followed by two waves of questionnaire. We find that these complementors primarily intend to use this digital technology to (a) comply with expectations attributed to the platform sponsor that such technology should be used, and (b) imitate other complementors’ perceived use behavior of the technology. The impact of the former subjective norm is amplified by the complementors’ financial dependency on the ecosystem. In sum, we contribute to the ecosystem and digital entrepreneurship research streams by examining the importance of different ecosystem actors in driving digital technology use by user-facing complementors and identifying the role of dependency in this context.