Partner Programs and Complementor Assessment in Platform Ecosystems: A Multiple-Case Study

Digital platform ecosystems are an omnipresent phenomenon. Compared to traditional modes of interaction, digital pltaforms rely on complementary produts and services that autonomous partners provide . However, adequate measures to assess the output of complementors are not readily available and lack theoretical grounding. Thus, the goal of this paper is to explore and organize criteria and related metrics for the assessment of complementor outputs. We conduct a multiple-case study on 14 partner programs of B2B software platforms. Then, we develop a taxonomy comprising different complementor outputs in digital platform ecosystems. The taxonomy comprises 26 criteria for two complementor roles and respective metrics applied by platform owners for their evaluation. Furthermore, we describe characteristics of partner programs such as variations in assessment modes and intervals. Our findings support platform owners when creating and updating their partner programs and provide the basis for future work on the assessment of complementor ouput