| With the progress of network technology and the popularity of Internet devices,online video has become an indispensable part of people’s online life.Despite the rapid growth of the overall online video market size,but many online video platform operating conditions are worrying,many online video platforms are still difficult to achieve profitability,the platform has begun to explore the appropriate mode of operation.How to attract consumers,advertisers and content generators is key for video platforms to develop pricing and operational strategies to achieve profitability.In view of this,based on combing and summarizing previous literature,this paper integrates game theory and optimization and other related theories,combines the user participation behavior and user preferences of video platforms,and analyzes the influencing factors and directions of the platform’s pricing and operation strategies from the perspective of marketing and operation,providing some guidance for the formulation of video platform operation strategies.The main research and innovation results of this paper are as follows.First,Chapter 3 of this paper explores platform video segmentation strategies based on video popularity,subscription fee pricing,and advertising strategies of advertisers for online video operating platforms that offer both paid and free videos and advertisers that deliver ads to the platforms,considering a market environment dominated by the existence of different consumer preferences.The findings suggest that platforms may increase the proportion of free videos offered to free consumers in a market dominated by willingness-to-pay consumers.The proportion of free videos offered by platforms decreases and subscription pricing increases as the size of video-heat-driven consumers increases,and the opposite is true as the size of willingness-to-pay consumers increases.Advertisers do not advertise to the platform when the size of video-heat-driven consumers is large.Then,the pricing and operation issues of video platforms are analyzed from the bilateral structure composed of consumers and advertisers.Based on the consideration of consumers’ preferences for pop-up features in video platforms,the impact of consumers’ pop-up preferences and aversion preferences on platform operation strategies is explored by constructing a bilateral platform competition model with quality differences.We find that the platform’s pop-up feature provision strategy is influenced by the quality of pop-up content and the proportion of consumers with pop-up preferences;this chapter also finds that when the quality of pop-up content is above a certain level,the proportion of consumers with pop-up feature preferences and the weight of consumers on pop-up content always positively influence the ad pricing of platforms that provide pop-up features alone.Due to the presence of quality advantages,high quality platforms do not have strong incentives to offer pop-up features.Subsequently,under the bilateral structure composed of consumers and content creators,the existence of same-side and cross-side network effects between content creators and consumers is considered,and a model of advertising placement and content creation subsidy strategies for video platforms is constructed to investigate the pricing and operation strategies of platforms under multi-homing scenarios.The results show that the platform’s ad placement level and content creation subsidy strategy are affected by both same-side and cross-side network effects,but such effects do not necessarily occur simultaneously and exhibit different properties under different user multi-homing scenarios.Then,also under the bilateral structure composed of consumers and content creators,the operating strategies of platforms when content creators are single-homing and multi-homing are compared and analyzed by constructing monopolistic and duopoly competition models by considering the competitive bottleneck scenario of multi-homing of content creators.It is found that platforms increase the level of value-added service investment as the platform’s valueadded service investment coefficient increases,while the platform’s advertising level and content creation subsidy pricing increase in the monopoly scenario and decrease in the competition scenario.When the marginal VAS investment cost increases,the platform will reduce the VAS investment level;in the monopoly situation,the platform will reduce the ad placement level and content creation subsidy pricing,which will not be affected in the competition situation.In a competitive scenario and when content creators are multi-homing,platforms have the lowest threshold to make VAS investments.Finally,under a bilateral structure consisting of consumers and content creators,platform content quality governance investments that generate positive utility for users on one side and negative utility for users on the other side are considered,and the impact of cross-side network effects and consumers’ sensitivity to CQA investments on platform pricing and investment strategies is explored by constructing and solving game model.It is found that the CQA investment strategies of platforms under different circumstances are influenced by cross-side network effects and consumers’ sensitivity to platform investments,but such effects do not always occur simultaneously.In cases where only one side of the users choose to be multihoming or there are no multi-homing users,the level of CQA investment and the size of multihoming users on the platform increase as consumers become more sensitive to CQA investment.In the case where both parties have multi-homing,the sensitivity of consumers to CQA investment has the opposite effect on CQA investment and the size of multi-homing users on the platform.The premise that platforms make CQA investments is related to consumers’ aversion to advertising.In general,based on bilateral market theory,this paper applies game theory and operational research methods,combines platform characteristics,user preferences and the multi-homing behavior prevalent among users on each side,and mainly discusses the pricing and operation strategies of platforms under different bilateral structures such as pricing of video content for consumers,subsidies for content creators,advertising pricing for advertisers,and the platform’s hot resource division and service investment The contribution of this paper is to discuss the pricing and operation strategies of the platform under different bilateral structures such as pricing of video content for consumers,subsidies for content creators,advertising pricing for advertisers,and the division of hot resources and service investment.The contributions of this paper mainly include: considering the characteristics of users on each side of the video platform,systematically considering multiple bilateral market structures in the context of video platforms,analyzing the pricing strategies of video platforms for users on each side,and enriching the research related to bilateral markets;by considering the participation decisions of users on each side,i.e.,the multi-homing behavior of users,enriching the research related to pricing and operation strategies of video platforms;network effects are exist not only among the same user group(same-side)but also among different user groups(cross-side),and this paper integrates the impact of cross-side and same-side network effects in user groups on the pricing and operation strategies of online video platforms.This paper aims to provide valuable suggestions for the development and competition of video platform companies,and to enrich and improve the relevant research on bilateral markets and video platforms. |
