Platforms as Orchestrators in E-Commerce Ecosystems

E-commerce is the digital backbone of the global goods economy and the most important economic sector with a turnover of $ 7.4 trillion in 2024. Predominant in the sector are platform-centered ecosystems that generate value by orchestrating participants’ value co-creation and benefiting from resulting network effects. So far, research has lacked any conceptualization of capabilities for orchestration in ecosystems. We combined a systematic literature review with a multi-case study of five e-commerce giants in an inductive approach for the derivation of five dynamic orchestration capabilities and as foundation for a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) fueled by a case survey of 100 e-commerce ecosystems to develop six successful orchestration types for full assortment and sub-assortment-oriented e-commerce-ecosystems.