DIGITAL PLATFORM SUSTAINABILITY IN ASIA’S OTT ECOSYSTEM: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF SATISFACTION BETWEEN IS SUCCESS AND MULTI-STAGE LOYALTY (IMPLICATIONS FOR DIGITAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PLATFORM-BASED INNOVATION)

Over-the-top (OTT) is a streaming service for video and media content, such as films, shows, web series, personalized television, and documentaries, delivered to customers via the Internet. OTT platforms constitute a central component of Asia’s platform-based entrepreneurial ecosystem, operating through subscription-driven digital business models that rely on user retention for their long-term sustainability. In the Indian OTT market, global platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime Video coexist alongside regional and language-focused ventures such as JioHotstar, Zee5, aha, and Hoichoi. It is poised to grow exponentially, creating an innovation- intensive, highly competitive platform economy, making it critical for digital platform entrepreneurs to retain customer loyalty for sustainability. An overarching theoretical framework of Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) was applied to examine the user satisfaction as a mediator to study the impact of OTT quality success attributes (D&M IS success model, DeLone & McLean, 2003) and price value on attitudinal and behavioral loyalty towards OTT services. Loyalty is conceptualized as a retention-oriented performance outcome that is critical to the sustainability of subscription-based digital platforms. This study evaluated the distinct impact of satisfaction on the four phases of loyalty (Oliver, 1997). A sample size of 440 respondents was finalized for the study using purposive sampling. The respondents for the study were Subscription Video-on-demand (SVOD) OTT service users in India who had been using at least two OTT platforms for a minimum of three months, excluding platforms that host user-generated content. PLS-SEM was used to test the data. The findings demonstrate that satisfaction functions as a differentiated evaluative mechanism driving retention-oriented loyalty, thereby supporting the long-term viability of OTT platforms and offering insights into platform entrepreneurship and sustainable digital business models.