arXiv 12 Jun 2026 · Econometrics
arXiv:2606.14836 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text
When a parent company acquires a horizontal competitor on the same side of a multi-sided market, it must decide whether to fully integrate the acquired platform or keep it as a separate brand. We study this in the context of Uber's acquisition of Postmates, using novel consumer receipt data that tracks food delivery spending. Employing an Age-Period-Cohort (APC) decomposition, we isolate the merger's effect on consumer spending while controlling for lifecycle and cohort effects. We find that Postmates users sharply reduced their spending on the platform after the merger, but spending shifted not only to UberEats, but also to competitors like DoorDash and Grubhub. Consumers who used multiple platforms and had low pre-merger activity on Postmates were more 'sticky', showing little change. Comparing our APC results with a standard Difference-in-Differences (DiD) design, we find the DiD underestimates the merger's total impact by missing market-wide effects. Our findings suggest that in multi-sided markets, keeping acquired platforms separate can be beneficial; dissolving them may push demand to competitors, and some sticky multihoming users may not shift spending at all.
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| Reference | Intensity | Mentions | Sections | Main text | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oblander, Shin and McCarthy, Daniel Minh (2023) Frontiers: Estimating the long-term impact of major events on consumption patterns: Evidence from COVID-19 | 0.737 | 3 | 2 | 100% |
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| 4 | Bakos, Yannis and Halaburda, Hanna (2020) Platform Competition with Multihoming on Both Sides: Subsidize or Not? | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
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| 6 | Dubé, Jean-Pierre H and Hitsch, Günter J and Chintagunta, Pradeep K (2010) Tipping and Concentration in Markets with Indirect Network Effects | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
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| 8 | Kawaguchi, Kohei and Kuroda, Toshifumi and Sato, Susumu (2021) Merger Analysis in the App Economy: An Empirical Model of Ad-Sponsored Media | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 9 | Li, Zhe and Netessine, Serguei (2020) Measuring the Effects of Platform Mergers: Evidence from a Ride-Hailing Network | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
| 10 | McCarthy, Daniel and Wilbur, Kenneth C (2023) Did Recent Platform Mergers Reduce Competition? Descriptive Analyses of 6 Platform Mergers | 0.405 | 1 | 1 | 100% |
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