{"status":"ok","message-type":"work","message-version":"1.0.0","message":{"indexed":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T14:12:39Z","timestamp":1785334359581,"version":"3.55.0"},"posted":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"group-title":"SSRN","reference-count":0,"publisher":"Elsevier BV","license":[{"start":{"date-parts":[[2026,1,1]],"date-time":"2026-01-01T00:00:00Z","timestamp":1767225600000},"content-version":"unspecified","delay-in-days":0,"URL":"https:\/\/www.uspto.gov\/ip-policy\/copyright-policy\/copyright-basics"}],"content-domain":{"domain":[],"crossmark-restriction":false},"short-container-title":[],"abstract":"<jats:p>Purpose-This paper documents JD.com's February 2025 entry into China's food-delivery market through JD Waimai-a service restricted to \"quality dine-in\" restaurants and offering a full year of zero commission to early-joining merchants-and examines how large dine-in restaurant franchises responded. It treats the franchise (merchant) layer as the site at which platform entry is resolved. Design\/methodology\/approach-The study is descriptive. It draws on a hand-built brand-year panel of nine major dine-in chains, assembled from IPO prospectuses, audited investor disclosures, industry store-trackers, and company statements, combined with a dated reconstruction of the entry and its regulatory aftermath. Findings-Three findings emerge. Adoption among large chains was rapid and effectively universal, with multi-homing rather than exclusivity as the equilibrium. The platform competition reshaped franchise unit economics, a link one listed operator documents directly in its prospectus. And headline store-count growth masked divergent strategies-expansion, franchise conversion, and contraction occurred simultaneously. Research limitations\/implications-The event resists clean causal estimation, for reasons the paper sets out; the contribution is documentary, and the panel skews toward large, well-reported chains. Originality\/value-The paper offers, to the author's knowledge, one of the first English-language academic treatments of the JD Waimai entry, framing it for the digital-economy literature on platform competition and merchant multi-homing and providing an openly archived panel for future work.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.2139\/ssrn.6887378","type":"posted-content","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T13:46:58Z","timestamp":1785332818000},"source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Platform Entry and the Franchise Response: JD Waimai and China's Dine-in Restaurant Chains, 2025"],"prefix":"10.2139","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0009-0005-8477-9393","authenticated-orcid":true,"given":"Boon Chuan","family":"Lim","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"78","container-title":[],"original-title":[],"deposited":{"date-parts":[[2026,7,29]],"date-time":"2026-07-29T13:46:58Z","timestamp":1785332818000},"score":1,"resource":{"primary":{"URL":"https:\/\/www.ssrn.com\/abstract=6887378"}},"subtitle":[],"short-title":[],"issued":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"references-count":0,"URL":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.2139\/ssrn.6887378","relation":{},"subject":[],"published":{"date-parts":[[2026]]},"subtype":"preprint"}}