Cooperative opportunities for strengthening SMEs in dealing with online platforms

This study investigates how small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in sectors reliant on online platforms in their value chain cope with dependency challenges and explores the potential of cooperative strategies to alleviate these issues. The research focuses on the Viennese hotel sector. Through qualitative content analysis and inductive category formation, the study finds that many SMEs reluctantly accept the dominance of online travel agencies (OTAs) due to established dependencies. As predicted by the resource dependence approach most SMEs search for ways to reduce these dependencies but tend to be unsure about effective responses. As cooperatives have been used in the past as an instrument to reduce dependencies, their suitability as a means for hotels to collectively build a countermeasure against OTAs was investigated in a subsequent step. The findings indicate that platform cooperatives are not considered a suitable response due to a lack of pioneers and uncertain success prospects. However, cooperative solutions that strengthen individual SMEs without directly challenging OTAs are viewed more favourably. Thus, platform cooperatives are not seen as most appropriate, but rather classical non-digital cooperatives supporting SMEs in a way that strengthen their individual position vis-à-vis online platforms.