A Business Model for Platform Businesses in Market Entry Stage in Iran’s Digital Platform Markets

The popularity of the platform BM in recent years, but the failure of platforms in various industries shows the need for field studies about the elements of the platform BM. This research was first carried out with a multi-case study strategy conducted 23 semi-structured interviews with managers and collected 11 archival reports related to the issue using theoretical sampling from three platforms of Tapsi, Snap, and Carpino, and data were analyzed by thematic analysis. As a result, 8 themes as elements of the BM in entering platform markets were identified. After this stage, 12 questionnaires were collected from experts, using snowball sampling, and then a model of the relationships between these factors was presented by the ISM method. The findings show that the competitive conditions of the platforms as the first element of BM have a high influence on other elements of BM. The most effective element in entering the market was the value proposition to users, which needs to be optimized according to the competitive conditions.