Platform businesses are typically resource-intensive and must scale up their business quickly in the early stage to compete successfully against fast-emerging rivals. We study a critical question faced by such firms in the novel context of multi-category two-sided platforms: how to optimally...

In this paper, we study the entry and expansion decisions of McDonald's and KFC in China using an originally assembled data set on the two chains' expansion in the China market from their initial entry up to year 2007. We analyze how the presence of a rival affects each firm's strategies. The...

We investigate the factors that affect the growth of Groupon, the leading online daily deals platform. We concentrate on the online-to-offline (O2O) aspect of the business that differentiates it from other e-commerce platforms - its strong connection to local markets. We focus on travel cost and...