The Optimal Free Trial Strategy Of The Software Platform With The Network Effect

With the rapid development of the electronics industry,the competition for software products is becoming increasingly fierce.For small and medium-sized software vendors or individual software developers,the development and sales of software products cannot be considered at the same time.Therefore,in the software market,small and medium-sized software developers or individual software developers often hand over the developed software to the software platform to promote sales,and pay a certain percentage of commission to the software platform.Therefore,this research is based on the current status of free trial of software products.For the supply chain system composed of software platform and software development,the optimal free trial strategy of the software platform and the optimal pricing strategy of the developer are studied.Software vendors often provide free trial strategies to reduce consumer uncertainty about software products and increase the installed base of software products.At the same time,by considering factors such as network effects and heterogeneous consumers,the supply chain system composed of a software platform and a software developer was analyzed.The software platform as the leader of the supply chain decided whether to adopt a free trial strategy and which A variety of free trial strategies: limited function free trial strategy,limited time free trial strategy or mixed trial strategy,and the software developer as a follower determines the price of the commercial version of the software product.First,the article analyzes the optimal trial strategy adopted by the software platform and the optimal trial period length or trial software quality under the trial strategy through Stackelberg game,and the optimal price of the commercial version software product determined by the software developer.Secondly,the influence of network effect strength on the optimal trial strategy is analyzed through numerical simulation,and it is found that the network effect strength is the key factor that influences the software developer to decide the optimal trial strategy.When the network effect strength is weak,the software platform will adopt a free trial strategy for a limited time;when the network effect strength is in the middle,the software platform will adopt a mixed trial strategy;when the network effect strength is strong,the software platform will adopt a limited function free trial strategy.Then,the study found that when the network effect strength is in a certain range,the mixed trial strategy will deteriorate.When the network effect strength is weak or strong,the mixed trial strategy will degenerate into a limited function free trial strategy,that is,hybrid The trial strategy and the limited function free trial strategy have the same effect;when the network effect strength is too large,the mixed trial strategy will degenerate into a limited time free trial strategy.Figure [amount] table [amount] reference [amount]...