Digitization has disrupted several industries, and one way in which that has most beenaffected is through digital platforms such as Uber, Airbnb and Amazon. In this way, producers and consumers are directly interacting with each other like never before. Disruption has not always been positive or democratic as is the commonly-held belief. Quite to the contrary a number of large music recording labels have profited from streaming platforms’ ubiquity where independents have struggled to hold down their place. Quite opposite though is the movement in the book publishing industry. The traditional big five- Harper Collins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House, Hachette and Simon & Schuster- have seen their overall market share thanks to the popularity of e-books where Amazon through its Kindle platform already holds an edge. The smaller firms here are also biting away at the big five’s chunks, taking advantage of the platform economy. A lot of independent writers too are getting their work published on the Kindle Direct Publishing platform instead of having to wait for the conventional giants’ approval as would otherwise be the case. They can also directly track their revenues rather than having to wait for months to hear about their pending royalties. Sentiment analysis conducted showed that positive reviews had a far higher result on the smaller players. With the bigger players, the market assumed the reviews were an outcome of their digital marketing savvy to get the positive ones listed on top. Twitter plays an important role in this as the place of discovery while Amazon is the final marketplace.

Source:https://knowledge.insead.edu/entrepreneurship/competition-in-the-age-of-amazon-7851

Uploaded Date:06 February 2018