Platform Strategy and International Expansion: Building a Defensible Competitive Position for Storezy in the European Self-Storage Market

This thesis develops the strategic framework through which StorEzy, a peer-to-peer self-storage platform, can build, defend and scale a sustainable competitive advantage. Building directly on the entrepreneurial foundations established in the companion thesis, this work addresses a single central question: how can StorEzy position itself to win in a fragmented, trust-sensitive two-sided market, and subsequently leverage that position to expand across Italy and into Europe? The analysis rests on four complementary theoretical pillars. Porter's Five Forces and Diamond Model map the competitive landscape and identify where structural advantage can be captured. The Resource-Based View examines the internal capabilities, trust architecture, platform technology, brand and community, that are difficult for competitors to replicate. Platform strategy theory explains the logic of two-sided marketplace design and the conditions under which StorEzy's model becomes self-reinforcing. Network effects analysis identifies the critical thresholds at which local presence transforms into durable market dominance. These frameworks are not applied in isolation: each one directly informs a concrete strategic decision, from competitive positioning and differentiation to the sequencing of Italian city expansion and first European market entry. The outcome is a durable, phased growth strategy, theoretically rigorous and operationally actionable, designed to take StorEzy from a validated Italian launch to a scalable European platform.