Investigation of Lock-in Effect in Ecosystem Development

At the moment in many markets, in particular in the Russian At the moment, many markets, particularly in Russia, are experiencing a growing number of different ecosystems. In this regard, it is important for companies whose ecosystems are just emerging or are already present in the market to retain customers within their ecosystem. Companies often attract and retain customers through an effective marketing policy, quality of the end product, and a high level of service. In addition to the above-mentioned competitive advantages, companies can be helped to retain an audience by the lock-in effect, which is used by a huge number of companies around the world. It is the effect of this effect on users that I will study in my work. In today's highly competitive environment, it is very important for companies to ensure the virality of their product. The lock-in effect is able to increase the virality of the product through its proper implementation in the marketing policy of the company. It is worth noting that lock-in has been studied by economists in the business environment, but it has not been studied in ecosystems actively developing in the markets. As an active user of various ecosystems and programs, I am concerned about this problem, because I notice, by my own example, how large companies affect my model of behavior. So I have identified several hypotheses that I would like to test and then analyze these hypotheses using various methods of analysis. The purpose of my work is to describe the "Lock-In" effect, in particular how this effect affects the model of behavior of modern consumers on the example of large IT companies. In accordance with the goal of the work the following tasks were set: 1. To review the current literature on the lock-in effect. To define the lock-in effect. To define the business ecosystem. To study how the lock-in effect manifests itself in IT ecosystems. 3. To consider the possibility of applying the results of the study to a nascent ecosystem (recommendations for managers of IT companies). In my work I am going to use the scientific, qualitative approach, as well as the method of theory building based on cases, as a methodology for analyzing the research problem posed. The scientific approach includes a systematic analysis of the scientific literature. Using this method of analysis, I am going to test several hypotheses: 1) The "lock-in" effect increases as the user has multiple gadgets working through a single ID. 2) There are several types of ecosystems, each with a specific target audience. 3) Ecosystem customer loyalty correlates with the level of ecosystem development, i.e. users give their preference to the ecosystem that has a larger audience. I will also use a qualitative approach where I will collect categorical data from people using different ecosystems. I will conduct a survey among active ecosystem users. I will then analyze the results to verify the validity of the findings in my research paper.