Making new enemies: How suppliers’ digital disintermediation strategy shifts consumers’ use of incumbent offerings

Abstract

Digitalization can help suppliers cut ties with their intermediaries and offer products directly to consumers. Such a digital disintermediation strategy likely affects both digital and non-digital incumbents in ways difficult to predict by current marketing theory. In our empirical investigation of digital disintermediation in the multibillion-dollar filmed home entertainment industry, we draw on consumers’ viewing behaviors before and after the launch of the streaming service Disney+. The findings show that access to Disney+ substantially increased the streaming category in the short run, accelerating the demise of non-digital linear television. However, only the new digital service benefited, while streaming incumbents suffered negative outcomes, despite public claims to the contrary. In addition to foreshadowing Netflix’s subsequent difficulties in defending its leadership position, these findings offer suppliers successful ways to liberate themselves from powerful intermediaries and help incumbents brace for the competitive upheavals that a digital disintermediation strategy is likely to trigger.