Simon Michalke

• Digital platforms (DPs) drastically change how users derive their value from offerings and how corporations interact with each other across fading global and organizational boundaries. The rapid development of DPs has already disrupted industries such as retail, entertainment, hospitality, transportation and fueled social and political controversies across the globe. To evaluate the design of DPs in this thesis, I mainly rely on the concept engagement platforms (EPs). EPs are physical or virtual touchpoint designed to enable and ease the integration of resources. Thereby, co-creation of value between actors is facilitated. Such EPs utilize functionalities to attract users and build loyalty. As time and attention of users are limited, EPs providing the best fit and experience attract and bind the largest user base, thus further increasing their usefulness to users due to network effects. In an increasingly globalized and digitalized world, this leads to an increased occurrence of “winner takes all environments”. To cement their status and keep users on their EPs, platform operators implement features that constantly seek the user’s attention. Yet, these practices may impact users negatively, e.g., through addictive potential or stress. Consequently, platform operators and designers who try to create impactful and supportive EPs should not solely focus on traditional marketing metrics, such as retention, and maximizing daily usage. Instead, understanding the intended value that users seek to derive provides more appropriate and sustainable solutions for engagement platforms users. This dissertation derives design knowledge for EPs of both the B2C and the B2B sectors. To derive design knowledge for operators and designers, this dissertation follows the Design Science Research approach to provide practitioners with actionable knowledge on how to inform platform design with insight based on the Service Logic.