降价或产品升级?智能音箱行业平台企业质量投资与补贴策略研究

Subsidies or product upgrade?Research on platform quality investment and price strategy of smart speaker industry

作为智能家居的控制枢纽和家庭人机交互的切入点,智能音箱持续吸引国内外巨头布局投资。然而,对于连接制造商与消费者的智能音箱平台企业而言,产品定价乱与质量创新难始终是其盈利痛点与补贴难点。本文基于双边市场理论与Hotelling模型,构建智能音箱平台双边补贴决策模型,探讨不同市场竞争与双边成员归属情形下,智能音箱平台企业在质量投资与价格补贴之间的关键权衡。结果表明:垄断情形下,当制造商受益于交叉网络外部性时,平台企业反而应该提高消费端价格;对称竞争情形下,质量投资与价格补贴的相互作用消失;当消费者规模较小时,平台企业应提高产品质量并选择差异化战略以巩固市场地位;相较双边成员单归属情形,成员多归属可能导致平台企业补贴策略低效。此外,数值结果分析了交叉网络外部效应、竞争系数、佣金比例等因素对产品价格、质量、补贴效率的影响。研究结论丰富了双边市场理论成果,并为智能音箱平台企业破解补贴困境提供了科学思路。

Smart home is a trend of future life.Sensors,electronic appliances and other devices are connected through communication systems and allow occupants to remotely monitor,control and otherwise interact with their homes.A smart speaker is usually the control hub of a smart home,which connects consumers and manufactures.After purchasing the smart speaker and smart devices,consumers can connect all facilities with each other by blue tooth or Wi-Fi.And then,users can control them by voice communication through smart speakers.Smart home platforms such as Tmall and Amazon have entered the industry one after another through various strategies to boost sales of smart speakers.Among these strategies,consumer subsidies can increase demand and capture market share,while hardware subsidies to manufacturers will help platforms build a more complete smart ecosystem.Platforms are heavily burdened with the incessant subsidies.They face a key trade-off between two-sided subsidies and investment in product quality.On the one hand,platforms should subsidize consumers because of the fierce competition,otherwise,their market share will decline.On the other hand,due to the high cost of upgrading,platforms need to subsidize manufacturers who do not have the incentive to upgrade their products.Without subsidies,platforms cannot build a comprehensive smart ecosystem,which will reduce the attractiveness to consumers.At the same time,quality of the basic functions also affects consumer utility.In summary,it is unclear whether platforms should subsidize two sides or offer high-quality smart speakers.To obtain a better understanding of this question,this paper constructs a decision model based on two-sided market theory to explore the key trade-offs between quality investment and subsidies and the coordinated effects of the two strategies.We carry out a full analysis of three distinct settings:monopoly,duopoly and partial multihoming.This paper starts by analyzing the interplay between pricing decisions and basic quality investment.We get some novel observations that contradict the existing literature.For example,the conventional wisdom about two-sided pricing is that,if one side benefits more from the network externalities,the platform should lower the price charged to the other side.However,we find that increasing the price charged to consumers may be an optimal choice when manufacturer’s future revenue from consumers goes up.From the perspective of consumers,improving basic function and lowering the price are partially replaceable.When the potential revenue benefit more from consumers in the future,they will spontaneously upgrade products,which will reduce the subsidy expenditure of the platform.Therefore,the platform may be better off by increasing in quality investment and charging a higher price,that is,high quality and high price go in tandem.Next,this paper analyzes how competition affects the pricing strategy and quality investment.We find that the coordination effect between these two strategies disappears when the two platforms are symmetric,which is different from the conventional wisdom.The reason is that we assume manufacturers rationally join the two platforms due to the replicability of coding.Once manufacturers are multihoming,the control function will no longer affect the“size of pie”,and the equilibrium result is that each platform gets half of the market share.When we analyze asymmetric model,the interplay appears again.In addition,when the commission ratio is high,the platform will subsidize both sides,which complements the conclusion about“competition bottleneck”structure,that is,to subsidize the single homing side and charge high price to the multihoming side.The reason is that high commission income gives the platform more incentive to build a comprehensive smart ecosystem.Additionally,we study the case of multihoming on both sides,which can better describe the trend of smart speaker industry.As the results show that if consumers are multihoming,their perceived differences in control functions will directly determine the efficiency of pricing strategies.For example,when additional purchase can only bring basic utility to consumers,the leverage of the pricing strategy almost disappears and the optimal quality is lower than that of duopoly.The platform should focus on improving product quality.