  Recently, some transportation service providers attempt to integrate the ride
services offered by multiple independent ride-sourcing platforms, and
passengers are able to request ride through such third-party integrators or
connectors and receive service from any one of the platforms. This novel
business model, termed as third-party platform-integration in this paper, has
potentials to alleviate the cost of market fragmentation due to the demand
splitting among multiple platforms. While most existing studies focus on the
operation strategies for one single monopolist platform, much less is known
about the competition and platform-integration as well as the implications on
operation strategy and system efficiency. In this paper, we propose
mathematical models to describe the ride-sourcing market with multiple
competing platforms and compare system performance metrics between two market
scenarios, i.e., with and without platform-integration, at Nash equilibrium as
well as social optimum. We find that platform-integration can increase total
realized demand and social welfare at both Nash equilibrium and social optimum,
but may not necessarily generate a greater profit when vehicle supply is
sufficiently large or/and market is too fragmented. We show that the market
with platform-integration generally achieves greater social welfare. On one
hand, the integrator in platform-integration is able to generate a thicker
market and reduce matching frictions; on the other hand, multiple platforms are
still competing by independently setting their prices, which help to mitigate
monopoly mark-up as in the monopoly market.
