Research On Strategic Motivation And Social Welfare Of Horizontal Mergers Of Platform Enterprises

In real life,there are many industries that can be analyzed by two-sided market theory,such as e-commerce platform,portal website,housing agency,shopping center and operation system.In recent years,with the continuous development of China's economy and technology,the Internet and traditional industries are accelerating convergence,making many industries have the characteristics of two-sided market.On the one hand,the Internet platform companies continue to enter traditional industry;on the other hand,the traditional types of businesses have started the transformation and upgrading,in various fields of social,retail,medical,financial have emerged a large number of Internet platforms enterprises.With the continuous integration of the Internet and traditional industries,more and more platform enterprises have emerged.It is precisely because of the continuous emergence of a large number of platform businesses,exacerbating the competition of platform enterprises,so there are more and more horizontal mergers cases of platform enterprises.For example,the horizontal merger of two group-buying platforms such as Dianping Holdings and Meituan.com,the horizontal merger of two life-service platforms such as 58 City and Ganji.com,the horizontal merger of two online video platforms such as Youku.com and Tudou.com,the horizontal merger of two online travel service platforms such as Ctrip and Qunar and so on.Based on the platform enterprise merger in recent years and based on the two-sided market theory,this paper studies the equilibrium pricing,profit and social welfare changes about merger of platform enterprises.First of all,this paper studies the pricing behavior and horizontal mergers behavior of platform enterprises through the theoretical literature review of two-sided markets.Secondly,it introduces the definition,classification,characteristics,user's attribution behavior and the strategic motivation of the platform enterprises merger.Finally,by constructing the Hotelling linear city model,the paper assumes that suppliers are single homing,while the consumers are partially multi-homing.By constructing consumer utility function,supplier profit function and platform enterprises profit function,we analyze the changes of market equilibrium and social welfare changes about platform enterprise merger.Besides,this paper also analyzes the factors that influence the market equilibrium and social welfare about platform enterprise merger,and how these factors affect the market equilibrium results and social welfare.By solving the mathematical model,we can get the conclusion of this paper.After the two-sided market merger,platform profit,suppliers profit,user fees and commodity price will not be affected by number of suppliers and consumer utility,but only be affected by unit traffic cost.After the platform enterprises merger,the total social welfare will be affected by unit traffic cost and consumer utility.Moreover,after the platform enterprises merger,consumer surplus,supplier profit and platform enterprises profits are improved under certain conditions,but the total social welfare is always improved.