寡头市场信息产品与服务的最优定价策略

Optimal pricing for information goods and complementary services in duopoly markets

在信息产品与服务竞争性市场中,信息产品及附加服务的定价策略日渐成为信息产品提供商关心的首要问题.而以往的研究多集中于单一信息产品的定价策略,没有统一考虑产品的后续服务,且假设消费者的网络外部性强度相同.分析了异质消费者和双寡头垄断市场,针对基础信息产品和附加服务的定价策略选择问题,建立了双寡头垄断市场中两个企业的捆绑销售和分别销售策略的博弈模型,使得双寡头企业通过4种局势下的策略选择实现收益最大化的定价策略.同时,将差异化网络外部性强度系数引入Hotelling模型,计算企业的需求函数和收益函数,并采用两阶段Bertrand博弈分析两个企业的定价策略和竞争行为.通过模型求解,得到4种局势下两家企业的最优定价解析解.通过数值模拟分析了潜在消费者的构成比例及市场规模对企业定价、市场占有率和最优收益产生的影响,以及不同成本和市场规模组合下企业的最优定价策略.

The optimal pricing strategy for information goods and complementary services has been a primary issue for providers of information goods in competitive markets. Most existing researches study pricing of only information goods without considering the subsequent services, or address the problem based on the assumption that the consumers have the same network effects. This paper studies the optimal pricing strategy with hetero- geneous consumers and duopoly companies who provide information goods and complementary services. By analyzing four different equilibria, a game model with two types of strategies--the bundle pricing strategy and separate pricing strategy-is proposed to obtain optimal strategies for firms to maximize their profits. Mean- while, a coefficient representing the strength of heterogeneous network effects is introduced into the Hotelling model to derive the demand function and the profit function of companies, and a two-stage Bertrand game is u- tilized to analyze the pricing competition. The analytic solutions for the duopoly＇ s optimal pricing together with their profits are computed by solving the proposed model. The numerical simulation illustrates how the market size and the market structure affect the prices of goods and services, market shares and total profits of the two companies, and how duopoly companies choose their different pricing strategies at different combinations of costs and market sizes.