Professor Pinar Akman's research cited by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's report on digital platform services
The Commission used Professor Akman's research to support aspects of its findings, proposals and recommendations to the Australian government regarding policy and legal changes to be introduced.
In particular, Professor Akman's research is used to support the finding that some online platform users may not be able to distinguish between search engines and web browsers, a lack of understanding on the users' part which can impede their ability to make informed choices between different online platform services.
The Commission makes recommendations and puts forward proposals to alleviate this state of consumer understanding, which is also one of Professor Akman's arguments in the research cited by the Commission. The Commission also proposes that further steps should be taken by the Australian Government and others to enhance the basic digital literacy levels of online platform users to include an understanding of how platforms work and how they are funded. These two elements are also features of Professor Akman's policy recommendations in her empirical research article A Web of Paradoxes: Empirical Evidence on Online Platform Users and Implications for Competition and Regulation in Digital Markets.
I’m very happy to see my empirical research on online platform users (based on surveys of over 11,000 consumers in ten countries, across five continents) inform competition law reform proposals in Australia, one of the leading jurisdictions in applying competition law in digital markets.
Read the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's full report.
