Group Hug: Platform Competition with User Groups
研究一个高质量平台和一个低质量平台竞争时，用户群体如何影响用户的选择协调问题，发现群体可能反而维持低质量平台的主导地位，且用户效用随群体规模非单调变化。
We consider platform competition for small users and a user group. One platform enjoys a quality advantage and the other benefits from favorable beliefs. We study whether the group mitigates the users’ coordination problem—i.e., joining a low-quality platform because they believe that other users would do the same. We find that a group that can facilitate coordination on the high-quality platform may choose to maintain the dominance of the low-quality one. Users’ utility is non-monotonic in the proportion of the group. Finally, we highlight factors that motivate the group to help the high-quality platform to win the market.