E-Commerce Clusters at the Intersection of Platform Urbanism and Urban Entrepreneurialism: Case Studies from China

Abstract

In the era of the platform economy, on the one hand, macro-phenomena such as platform capitalism, and platform urbanization have attracted attention, whereas, on the other hand, studies on micro perspectives such as platform entrepreneurship, as well as platform society have also emerged.
Positioned at the intersection of platform urbanism and urban entrepreneurialism, our study aims at analyzing the evolution of and entrepreneurship in three e-commerce furniture industry clusters in China (Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province; Nankang District, Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province; and Suining County, Xuzhou City, Jiangsu Province). It is based on a recent, four-month fieldwork in China. The furniture industry clusters in Shunde District and Nankang District started in the 1980s and early 1990s respectively, the former has become the most important supply of Chinese furniture for domestic market in a competitive market, while the latter has seen tremendous growth in recent years under the strong power of an entrepreneurial government at different scales. The furniture industry cluster in Suining County, on the other hand, sprouted in 2006 and was a cluster created from scratch by grassroot entrepreneurs relying on the Taobao e-commerce platform.
In the era of platform economy and the background of China's developed e-commerce, all three regions are trying to develop and explore their own offline and online furniture industries (Furniture industry and Furniture e-commerce industry). These three clusters are in different stages of cluster evolution and are characterized by different types of entrepreneurship, which ultimately produce geographically differentiated kinds of platform capitalism.