Two Sides to Every Story? Lessons from the Travelport/Worldspan EC case

For a market to be described in economic terms as “two-sided” two conditions must hold. First, the product at the centre of the analysis is a “platform” that allows or facilitates the interaction of two distinct groups of customers. Second, the benefit that customers in one group derive from the interaction is larger the greater the number of customers on the other side of the platform (the platform creates indirect network externalities). Examples of markets with two-sided features include the media…