Study On Partnership Model And Coordinating Mechanism Of Mobile Commerce

The application of the mobile Internet has broken down the value chain structure in which the mobile network operators (MNOs) are dominating and focal, and has changed the partnership modes for partners in mobile commerce. It is important to build stable, competitive advantage enhanced and fully coordinated partnership for mobile commerce companies. The research focus of the thesis is the partnerships between MNOs, service providers (SPs), equipment & platform providers (EPs), and the research questions are as follows:1) the influences of inter-organizational cooperation, competition and conflict for the stabilization of mobile commerce partnerships.2) The partnership mode selection of companies for cooperating with other partners in the circumstance of the mobile Internet. 3) Developing mechanisms to coordinate mobile commerce partnership in complicated partnership modes. To investigate the above questions, the main work and contributions of the thesis are as follows:First, aiming at the complicated inter-organizational relationships of mobile commerce caused by the mobile Internet, considering the inter-organizational cooperation, competition and conflict, which are elements of mobile commerce partnership, a model of mobile commerce partnership is constructed based on Lotka-Volterra equation. Based on the stable point of the model, the necessary condition of mobile commerce partnership's stabilization is found, the mobile commerce partnerships are classified into five types based on the industry practice:powerful MNO - weak SP, powerful MNO - weak EP, powerful EP- weak SP, weak MNO- powerful SP and cooperation-oriented partnership.Second, aiming at the question which the mobile Internet changes the partnership mode of the mobile commerce, considering the practice in Chinese mobile telecommunication industry, a partnership mode selection model is constructed based on game theory. Taking the cooperation-oriented bilateral partnership composing of a MNO and a SP for example, The partnership mode (walled garden, dump pipe and dual-channel) selection behaviors of the MNO and the SP, and the influence of the revenue sharing ratio for partnership mode selection are researched. The research finds that, adding the mobile Internet service of the SP will brings direct and indirect profits to the MNO. While selecting partnership modes, companies can consider the comparative marketing advantage of the MNO, and the unit value chain-wide revenue ratio of the mobile Internet service to the cooperative service comprehensively.Third, aiming at the cooperation and competition of companies in the dual-channel partnership mode, a multilateral partnership model which composes of a MNO, a SP and an EP is constructed based on game theory. The research finds that,1) the relationship of the equilibrium marketing effort between the MNO and the SP (or the EP) are "as one falls,another rises".2) The MNO's profit may decrease with certain competition intensities between the SP and the EP. (3) The entire companies profits of the SP and the EP depend on the marketing externality weight ratio of the SP to the EP, the comparative marketing advantage of the SP relative to the EP, and the competition intensity between the SP and the EP on the mobile Internet service.Finally, aiming at the inefficiencies in mobile commerce partnerships, coordinating mechanisms side-payment and multi-side-payments are proposed, so as to coordinate the mobile commerce partnerships with different partners. The research finds that,1) the double marginalization exists in the dual-channel systems of mobile commerce, and the revenue sharing contracts cannot coordinate the mobile commerce partnerships.2) The coordinating mechanism based on side-payment can coordinate the bilateral partnership with dual-channel partnership mode.3) An asymmetric "payment-reception" multi-side-payments mechanism is proposed, which can full coordinate the cooperation among the MNO, the SP and the EP in the dual-channel partnership mode, and the competition between the SP and the EP on the mobile Internet services.