Platform Price,Service Quality And Platform Scale:Theory And Empirical Research

In recent years,with the rapid popularization and widespread use of network information technology,the Internet economy is booming,and platform companies are showing a trend of blowout growth.In the process of platform growth,in order to obtain a larger market scale,the platform can use price competition strategies and non-price competition strategies to attract users to access.Coincidentally,almost all Internet platforms adopt low-price subsidy pricing strategies to attract bilateral users in their initial stages.After fierce price competition,most platforms on the market will be forced out of the market because of the broken capital chain.Only a few Internet giants with strong financial resources still survive.They will further expand the market size through price and non-price competition strategies based on the existing user base.The market will eventually form a monopoly.In order to study the effects of price strategies and non-price strategies of Internet platform companies in the two-sided market under different circumstances,this article combs the previous studies on the two-sided market theory and platform theory.Based on Hotelling classic model,this paper constructs a duopoly competition model that conforms to the characteristics of bilateral markets and economic reality.According to the two access characteristics of bilateral users single-homing and partial multi-homing respectively,the influence of platform "site selection",namely platform service quality strategy and platform price strategy,on the scale of users in the bilateral market is studied.It also compares the implementation effects of platform competition strategies in the two situations of symmetric and asymmetric location of the two platforms,and provides theoretical guidance for the selection of competition strategies of Internet platform companies under different situations.Obtained by the model are derived the following conclusions: 1)When the two-sided users are single-owned and the platform site selection is symmetrical,the platform price strategy and service quality strategy are invalid,and the two oligarchic competition platform companies always divide the market equally.2)In other cases,both the price strategy and the service quality strategy are effective,but they have different effects on the scale of the platform.Among them,changing the service quality under the conditions of multi-homing and asymmetric platform location has the greatest impact on the scale.3)The greater the user cross-network externality,the better the effect of the platform’s price strategy and service quality strategy.4)The poorly-served platforms in the current market should improve service quality and increase prices appropriately to obtain greater market size and profits.Platforms with better services can attract users through price reduction strategies to expand their scale.In order to verify the conclusions drawn from the mathematical model analysis,this paper selects some business data on the Meituan Takeaway platform for empirical analysis.Through data regression,it can be confirmed that platform price and scale are negatively correlated,platform service quality is positively correlated with scale,and platform service quality will affect platform scale by affecting price.