Technology and Disintermediation in Online Marketplaces
Blocking an easy alternative communication channel meaningfully reduces sellers and buyers bypassing an online marketplace, with the effect strongest for high-friction, high-value transactions.
Summary
Gu studies how communication technology affects disintermediation, buyers and sellers circumventing a platform to transact directly, using the blockade of Skype in mainland China as a natural experiment on a large U.S. freelance marketplace. She finds that restricting this alternative channel cut disintermediation by about 18 percent, with a larger effect for time-sensitive, communication-intensive, and high-skilled jobs, and for experienced or
Editor's opinion
Narrow platform-disintermediation mechanism paper (Skype block), not a firm-strategy lever.
Key concepts
Disintermediation · Platform vulnerability · Communication technology