Le marché biface comme convention de production : deux études de cas d’organisations plateformes de transport de personnes

Cross-network effects are the basis of the theory of two-sided markets (Rochet and Tirole 2003, 2006) and concern relatively new objects in economics: digital platforms (Evans and Schmalensee, 2016). These are understood in the literature as three distinct objects: as a market in industrial economics, as an organisation in organisational theory, and as a system in the study of information systems. This article proposes to analyse the capacities of digital platforms through the convention economy approach (Salais and Thévenot, 1986), which allows us to consider two-sided markets as exchange conventions. It also invites us to use the tools forged by conventionalist approaches to performativity (Brisset, 2015a, 2016), in order to analyse the conditions that platform organisations must fulfil in order to position themselves as coordinating agents and exploit cross-network effects. Based on case studies of two digital platforms in the mobility sector, the article concludes that there are two main conditions ensuring organisations’ ability to exploit cross-network effects. The first condition is that the interdependence of the utility levels of each side of the market must be considered as a reference option by the digital platforms. The second condition is that these levels must be tested to see if the platform’s work is relevant. The two case studies present a success and a failure in exploiting cross network effects.