Catering Take-out Platform Pricing Strategy Based On Two-Sided Market Theory

The take-out website is a typical bilateral platform,which connects consumers and businesses on both sides of the platform.In recent years,the rise of the catering industry at home and abroad has become an indispensable part of the public life.At first,the entrepreneurial platform represented by ele.me appeared in the public view,later,various e-commerce platforms and network giants have also entered the take-away market.Different from the former,the platform of these platforms has a certain user base.Different from the traditional market,the quality of merchants and the speed of logistics have been plagued by the development of the take-away platform,and also restrict the pricing of the platform.Therefore,the take-out platform began to pay attention to the quality of the business and enhance the logistics investment,hoping to break through the development dilemma by improving the quality of the business and improving the logistics speed.To this end,from the perspective of the bilateral market,this paper first analyzes the pricing problem of the take-out platform considering the quality of the merchants and the logistics investment in the monopolistic market,and then conducts an in-depth study on the pricing strategy of the take-out platform considering the user base in the competitive market.In the monopolistic market environment,the optimal pricing decision of the take-out platform is studied in the case of considering the quality sensitivity of the consumers to merchants,quality cost of merchants,the network effect of the consumer group and the logistics investment.Through the establishment of the model,the optimal pricing,number of people and profits of the take-out platform under the equilibrium condition are obtained.The study found that consumers' sensitivity to quality will increase the platform's pricing for consumers and merchants,while the quality cost of merchant is increased,the platform will appropriately reduce the merchant's fees but will increase the consumer's fees;the network utility in the group is conducive to the operation of the platform;the improvement of the logistics level can help the platform to increase user's traffic and achieve scale profitability.In particular,the access issues introduced by the platform to improve the quality of merchants are discussed.On the basis of building the model,the platform access strategy is considered,and the optimal pricing decision of the platform is obtained.Through analysis,it is found that the platform will consider implementing the access strategy only when the consumer's preference for the quality level of the merchant is large enough,and the implementation of the access will increase the number of consumers of the platform and increase the profit margin.In the competitive market environment,aiming at the duopoly market of e-commerce platform where user-based take-out platform and entrepreneurial take-out platform coexist,on the basis of building the model,considering the asymmetric competition model between the user-based take-out platform and the entrepreneurial take-out platform under the conditions of multiple ownership ratio of consumers quality difference of merchants and conversion cost.The optimal pricing decision of duopoly platform is obtained.Through comparative analysis,it is found that the profit of the take-out platform with user base is higher than that of the entrepreneurial take-out platform;whether it is a user-based take-out platform or an entrepreneurial take-out platform,the multi-attribute ratio of consumers will increase the price of consumers and reduce the price of the merchants,while the platform profit is on the rise;the platform should encourage the merchant to improve the quality while controlling the cost for attracting more consumers;the user-based take-out platform has certain advantages for bilateral user pricing and its own profits.