Abstract: Business model design is becoming a source of sustained competitive advantage for firms. What is less well known by us is that how complementary assets specificity affects a firm’s business model design? Although complementary assets can help firms break through their own resource constraints, the inertia, conflict, and devaluation of complementary assets pose many challenges. In addition, from the perspective of complementary assets, the relationship governance of upstream and downstream partners is also a very critical contextual variable in the study of business models. Previous studies have considered these issues in a lack of detail, and there are few empirical studies to discuss these issues, which hinders us from understanding the business model design from the perspective of complementary assets. Therefore, the scientific research question of this study focuses on “how does complementary assets specificity affect the business model design of the firms?” This study aims to explore this research question by examining the main effects of complementary assets specificity and business model design, and the moderating role of relational governance. Therefore, four hypotheses of the relationship among complementary asset specificity, relational governance and business model design are proposed. The research strategy of this study is the questionnaire survey method. In order to ensure the reliability and validity of the measuring tools, the scales are taken from the classic literature. In order to adapt to the Chinese context, this study first follows the reasonable procedure of scale translation, translates into Chinese scale by means of back translation, and then appropriately modifies the items according to Chinese context to form a measurement tool for collecting empirical data. All scales use the 7-point Likert scale. The data analysis tools are SPSS 20 and AMOS 20.The dependent variables of this study are the novelty and efficiency of business model design. Since these two variables represent two classic design themes of business model, there is no orthogonal relationship between the two variables, but there is a certain correlation. When one variable is used as the dependent variable, the other variable is treated as the control variable. The independent variable of this study is complementary asset specificity. The moderating variable of this study is relational governance. Control variables include firm size, the firm age, industry type, firm ownership. The formation of the business model is also affected by the assets and capabilities of the firm itself. Therefore, the technological capabilities and asset complementarity of the enterprise are taken as control variables.This study is based on the manufacturing and service firms in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei regions, which are most developed in the domestic market economy. The questionnaire was issued in three channels. First, the middle and senior managers of the EMBA and MBA programs are invited to fill out the questionnaires, and the on-site paper questionnaires are issued and recycled. The questionnaire recovery rate is high. Second, the high-level interviews are combined with the opportunities of the enterprises to conduct research. Fill in the questionnaire on the spot, use this method to fill out the questionnaire, the time is most sufficient for the respondents, and the recovery rate of the questionnaire is high. Third, entrust the social organizations, industry associations and other enterprises with more concentrated management to issue the electronic questionnaire. The method of targeted issuance also has a high recovery rate. A total of 353 questionnaires were distributed through the above three channels, and 337 questionnaires were collected, with a recovery rate of 95.5%, avoiding the problem of non-return bias. Among them, 178 valid questionnaires were confirmed with a effective rate of 52.8%. Analysis of variance showed that there were no significant differences between the three sets of samples collected by the three channels.The hypotheses are tested by conducting hierarchical regression analysis with questionnaire survey data collected from 178 sample Chinese firms. The research results show that: (1) complementary assets specificity has a significant negative impact on the novelty of business model design, but has no significant impact on the efficiency of business model design; (2) relational governance has a positive moderating effect on the relationship between complementary assets specificity and novelty of business model design, and a negative moderating effect on the relationship between complementary assets specificity and efficiency of business model design. This research has a certain theoretical contribution. First, the mechanism that influences the design of business models is discussed from the perspective of complementary assets. In the past, such research was still relatively rare, and it only mentioned that firms need to obtain complementary assets from outside to support the realization of business models. Secondly, this study examines in detail the mechanism of the impact of complementary asset specificity on business model design, and tests the relevant hypotheses through empirical research, and draws more scientific conclusions. Previous studies have suggested that specialized complementary assets are difficult to obtain in the market and require a long time to accumulate. Therefore, specialized complementary assets can be used as a source of competitive advantage. However, this advantage is based on the preconditions that the environment is relatively stable. When the environment is highly volatile, complementary assets specificity will bring disadvantages. The results of empirical research show that complementary assets specificity will hinder the novelty of business model design and will not promote efficiency. The stronger the relationship governance, the weaker the positive effect of complementary asset specificity on the efficiency of business model design.The management inspiration of this research is that enterprises need to fully consider the role of specific complementary assets in the design of business models, and pay more attention to the role of social and non-economic factors such as relationship governance. For firms pursuing a more innovative business model design, it is an ideal strategy to circumvent investment-specific complementary assets and strengthen relationship management with partner firms; but for firms that pursue more efficient business model design, there is no need to give special consideration to the issue of complementary assets specificity, and it is better to reduce the relationship governance with partner firms.

Key words: complementary assets specificity, business model design, relational governance