用户规模、市场结构与平台定价

User Scale,Market Structure and Platform Pricing

纵观互联网新经济时代的平台企业发展,普遍经历了"烧钱"的获客阶段和坐拥大量用户的盈利阶段。现有的经典文献在静态分析框架下研究了双边平台的用户定价问题,但平台企业的"烧钱"行为及其不同阶段定价的动态变化仍然缺乏深入的理论研究。为此,本文构建一个"获客+盈利"的两阶段模型,分析平台企业的动态定价问题。本文研究结论表明:在获客阶段,如果完全垄断下平台用户的规模增长或者寡头垄断下平台用户的相对规模增长的网络外部性越大,那么平台企业在此阶段的优惠力度也越大。更进一步,本文将外生的两阶段模型拓展为内生的无限阶段模型,研究了平台发展和竞争的市场演化。本文研究结论表明:在完全垄断的情况下,随着买方和卖方用户的网络外部性系数不断增大,平台企业在无限阶段的市场份额也不断增大,直到完全拥有整个市场。在双寡头垄断的情况下,当买方和卖方用户的网络外部性系数足够大或者平台间初始用户相对规模的网络外部性足够大时,初始用户规模更大的平台企业能够"赢者通吃";当买方和卖方用户的质量偏好程度足够大时,两家平台最终会均分市场。

Throughout the development of platform enterprises in the era of Internet new economy,they have generally experienced the stage of customer acquisition by " burning money" and the stage of profit with a large number of users. The existing classic literature studies the user pricing problem of bilateral platforms under the static analysis framework. However,the " burning money" behavior of platform enterprises and the dynamic changes of pricing at different stages still lack in-depth theoretical research. Therefore,this paper constructs a two-stage model of " acquisition+profit" to analyze the dynamic pricing of platform enterprises. It proves that in the stage of customer acquisition,if the network externalities of scale growth of platform users under the complete monopoly or the network externalities of the relative scale growth of platform users under the oligopoly are larger,then the preferential degree of platform enterprises will be greater in this stage. Furthermore,this paper extends the exogenous two-stage model to the endogenous infinite stage model,and studies the market evolution of platform development and competition. It proves that under the condition of complete monopoly,with the increase of network externalities coefficients of buyers and sellers,the market share of platform enterprises in the infinite stage increases until they have the whole market. In the case of duopoly,if the network externalities coefficient of buyers and sellers is large enough or the network externalities of the relative scale of initial users between platforms are large enough,the platform enterprises with larger initial users can realize " winner-takes-all". If the quality preference of buyer and seller users is large enough,the two platforms will eventually share the market equally.