Formation of a Competitive Strategy of a Company in Multi-Sided Markets: The Case of Online Taxi Aggregators in Russia

In the last decade, the market of taxi aggregators as a digital platform and service provider started to develop rapidly with the application of new technologies such as available smartphones and ubiquitous mobile internet. The old business model of multisided platforms received new modern features and transformed into unique tool to make the business easier for both sides the suppliers and regular customers. The taxi industry is the one that changed dramatically because of the implementation of multisided platform concept. The phenomenon of the Russian aggregators and their strategy development became the main focus of this work. The elaboration of the competitive strategy is a complicated process that involves different aspects of the market features, company’s characteristics and other factors. The study of the strategy development for the digital multisided platform requires the examination of new concepts to fit the transformed model features. The thesis will examine the relevant literature on the topic of the multisided markets and platform functioning, apply the effective analysis to study the Russian taxi market and understand the reasons for the success of one of the leaders – Yandex. Taxi. The combination of the scientific approach, analysis of the existent and convenient cases and the collection of the relevant data through the questionnaire of the taxi users will make it possible to find the pattern for the strategy creation. The thesis will discuss the factors that significantly influence the strategy and provide the recommendation on the implementation of estimated measures to make the existing strategy more functional.