Expanding the core-business of Stuvia leveraging the data of its existing online platform

Abstract

Nowadays, many markets are formed around online platforms, which facilitates a place where sellers and buyers can find each other without knowing each other. An online platform acts as an intermediate between two people who can fulfil each other's needs. In addition to bringing the two sides into contact, a platform also facilitates payments that make purchase and sale possible. Hereby, an online platform exhibits the characteristics of a two-sided market. New challenges arise due to the large amount of two-sided markets on the internet. These challenges are related to technical and organizational aspects, generating problems such as decentralization of user data, privacy concerns, and platform competition. Those problems correlate with the rapid increase of the number of platforms on the internet and the large amounts of data that become available as a result, and call for a new inventive approach. This research aims to present a guideline that enables the development of an extension of two-sided markets towards multi-sided markets, whereby not just two sides provide value to each other, but multiple sides increase both the value to the user and the company. The user-generated data is converted into an additional revenue streams alongside a company's current core business. In addition to providing a guideline, this study aims to see which conglomerate diversification strategy can be used to enter the recruitment market on the basis of user generated data. The results of this research are obtained from empirical research, through interviews with actors from the recruitment market. This study shows that, when choosing the right diversification strategy, several barriers have to be overcome. Regulations that respond to the protection of personal data must be taken into account and the DNA of the company must be preserved. This research provides a guideline that, in addition to crafting the right strategy, should provide handles for companies like Stuvia that have access to redundant user data. The conclusion is that -based on the data available to Stuvia- the recruitment market is a potential market to enter. The strategy that should be used by Stuvia to expand into the recruitment market is segmentation on specific user profiles on the basis of advertisements. These user profiles arise from various aspects mentioned in this research, in which the matching of a user profile and the open vacancy is of great importance.