Free Pricing For Network Information Products Based On User Perceived Value

Since1990s, online shopping has been booming and become one of the prevailingmethods of consuming. The prosperity of Internet has exerted enormous and profoundinfluence on every respect of human being’s life.Under the increasingly fierce marketcompetition, confronted with an ever-segmented marketplace and constantly diverse goodsand services, not only the producers require an enormous amount of information resources,but also that demand of consumers aiming at lowering the negative impact of informationasymmetry has increased with each passing day.The fast-speed, the substantial amount ofinformation transmission as well as the convenience in availability facilitated by Internetmake “information” evolve into a kind of product. This kind of network information productis not just “information” and “data” in traditional sense, but intangible products includingrelevant information technology.It has been several decades since internet appeared, yet, the emergence of networkinformation products derived from internet is fairly brand new invention in this era. With thefeature of “high sunk cost and low marginal cost”, reasonable pricing for network informationproducts is rather difficult.Moreover, the product pricing is affected by consumer preference,payment capability, customer experience value and other emotional and social factors. In thisarticle, it will introduce the theory of Customer Perceived Value (CPV) into the analysis ofnetwork information products pricing. By reviewing and analyzing literature related tonetwork information products pricing and CPV theory, the article tends to prove free pricingis valid to network information products pricing. Furthermore, for network informationproduct users, it will present the quantitative model based on CPV theory. Supported by theclassification of market structure, it will further analyze free pricing of network informationproducts in the monopoly market and oligopoly market respectively. Finally, it will takeMicroblog as example and conduct a strategic analysis for the free pricing of Microblog.Provide guidance for weibo pricing.