Value Creation and Value Appropriation in Strategic Alliances: An Experimental Study of Coopetition

Abstract

Strategic alliances are coopetitive in nature as they incorporate both cooperation and competition: partners cooperate to use their complementary resources for joint value creation while simultaneously compete to appropriate the created value. We study this tension between value creation and value appropriation both theoretically and experimentally by modeling coopetition as the interaction between two players. The experimental results demonstrate that, contrary to the game-theoretical analysis and to the conventional wisdom, existing competition does not undermine value creation within the alliance. Instead, initial experience has shown to have a significant influence on alliance performance and sustainability: relationships that successfully establish trust at the start are likely to sustain high cooperation level and achieve the efficient outcome even after the market condition has changed. The persistent effect of past experience can be explained by conditional strategies: players adjust their allocation of resources in the direction matching their opponents’ investment level in the previous round. The results imply that a positive mindset towards coopetitive alliance, especially in the presence of intense competition, is the prerequisite for a conducive alliance. The study makes one of the first attempts to employ the experimental method to enrich our understandings on the trade-off between value creation and value appropriation, and it contributes to the literature of coopetition and strategic alliances.