The booming of digital platforms has provided a variety of platform options for digital entrepreneurs. A growing number of entrepreneurs choose to be multihomed across different platforms to seek rapid development. However, how to adopt multihoming strategies to achieve high performance on new platforms has not been systematically answered by existing research. Focusing on 190 multihoming game apps in American mobile application platforms (including iOS and Android platforms), this paper employs a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify specific paths that can enhance the multihoming performance of entrepreneurs on target platforms, based on the combination of five factors: original product performance, product scale, multihoming speed, multihoming experience, and modular application. The results show that there are three paths to high multihoming performance on the Android platform, including user favorable experience driven, network effective experience driven, and modular applicable experience driven paths; and there is one path to high multihoming performance on the iOS platform, named user favorable experience–network effective experience driven path. Furthermore, this paper identifies two paths leading to non-high performance on the iOS platform, characterized by a lack of multihoming experience, poor utilization of network effects, and insufficient emphasis on user experience, compounded by the poor performance of products on the original platform, thus failing to achieve higher download volumes. The findings contribute to theoretical research on the determinants of multihoming performance for digital entrepreneurs, as well as practical assistance for entrepreneurs using multihoming strategies across platforms.

Foreign Economics & Management
JIN Yuying, Editor-in-Chief
ZhengChunrong, Vice Executive Editor-in-Chief
YinHuifang HeXiaogang LiuJianguo, Vice Editor-in-Chief
The Path Effect of Multihoming Strategies for Digital Entrepreneurs Performance to Achieve High Performance: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Game Apps on Mobile Application Platforms
Foreign Economics & Management Vol. 47, Issue 05, pp. 50 - 65 (2025) DOI:10.16538/j.cnki.fem.20241101.101
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Wu Wei, Han Wei. The Path Effect of Multihoming Strategies for Digital Entrepreneurs Performance to Achieve High Performance: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of Game Apps on Mobile Application Platforms[J]. Foreign Economics & Management, 2025, 47(5): 50-65.
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