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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2021, Vol. 29 ›› Issue (7): 227-237.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2019.0819

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Will Data Advantages Increase Platform Companies' Pricing?——Model Derivation and Theoretical Analysis

JING Wen-jun1,2   

  1. 1. School of Economics, Shanxi University of Finance and Economics, Taiyuan 030006, China;
    2. China Center for Internet Economy Research, Central University of Finance and Economics, Beijing 100081, China
  • Received:2019-06-07 Revised:2019-11-09 Online:2021-07-20 Published:2021-07-23

Abstract: In the era of digital economy, data has become an important production factor of platform enterprises, which has profoundly affected the market behavior of platform companies including pricing behavior.Whether the accumulation of data will generate a "data monopoly" phenomenon and promote the price increase of platform enterprises has become an important practical and academic issue.In view of this, from the theoretical point of view, whether the data advantage will cause the company to raise prices under the monopolistic and differentiated competition scenarios is analyzed.In the analysis of the monopoly scenario, based on the two-sidedmarket model proposed by Armstrong in 2006, the parameters reflecting the data accumulation are constructed and the optimal pricing function is solved, then how the data affects the pricing of monopoly platform enterprises is clarified. In the analysis of differentiated competition scenarios, the concept of "preference cost" is introduced and the Hotelling model is improved to derive the effect of data on the pricing of different types of platform enterprises.The main research results show that:(1) Compared with traditional monopolistic platform enterprises, monopolistic platform enterprises with data advantages will reduce the price of their products or services;(2) Under the conditions of differentiated competition, the enterprises which to meet users' marginalization or relatively low-level demand, data accumulation will reduce pricing, while for enterprises offering mainstream or relatively high-level products or services, data accumulation will increase pricing;(3)For a marginalized or low-end market Demand increases with the increase of data; for a mainstream or higher-end market, demand decreases with the increase of data; (4)In a differentiated competitive environment, data accumulation helps to improve platform enterprise profits.Further, this paper discusses the relationship between data advantage and price discrimination, long tail effect, and monopoly characteristics.First of all, the data advantage helps the monopolistic enterprise to achieve complete price discrimination and the new price discrimination scenarios may emergence.Secondly, the data helps enterprises identify their own characteristics, and further makes the platform market divided into "mainstream level" and "long tail level".At last, the data has the effect of weakening the market power and can reflect a more positive welfare effect.On the other hand, it it also proposed that there are hidden concerns about data diversification and transaction behavior of enterprises. Diversified data helps enterprises to grasp user preferences more accurately, and implement more covert and extensive price discrimination to occupy consumer surplus.

Key words: data advantage, platform enterprise, pricing behavior, monopoly, differentiated competition

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