Abstract: With the wide application of information technology, information strategy has become an important means to coordinate the supply and demand of many logistics platforms. As information coordinators, bilateral platforms strategically hide part of market information or control the information obtained by users to maximize their own interests. As a new type of bilateral platform, the network freight platform is facing different information levels between shippers and carriers. Therefore, how to make the optimal price and choose the optimal information strategy under the incomplete information user becomes an important issue for the sustainable development of network freight platform. Starting from providing different information strategies, a pricing model based on Hotelling, an oligopolistic competitive network freight platform is constructed, and the optimal pricing of the platform under different information strategies is discussed from four different user ownership perspectives. Through comparative analysis, it is found that no matter what kind of users they belong to, the platform pricing for bilateral users is equal. Under bilateral orders the shipper’s, price is equal to that when the platform provides incomplete information strategy to both bilateral users and incomplete information strategy only to the carrier, which is greater than that when the platform provides incomplete information strategy only to the shipper. The carrier's price is equal when the platform provides an incomplete information policy for both bilateral users and when the platform provides an incomplete information policy only for the shipper. When the network externality of shipper side is larger than a certain value, the carrier’s price is the highest when the platform only provides incomplete information strategy to the shipper. Under the carrier multi-homing, the price of the shipper is the highest when the incomplete information strategy is provided to both users of the platform and the network externality of shipper side is within a certain threshold range, and it is the lowest when the incomplete information strategy is provided to the shipper only. In the case of bilateral multi-ownership, the shipper’s price is highest when the platform only provides incomplete information strategy to the carrier. Carrier prices are highest when the platform provides an incomplete information strategy only to the shipper. In the case of bilateral single ownership or unilateral multiple ownership, when the network externality of the shipper side is within a certain threshold range, it is more advantageous for the network freight platform to choose the strategy of providing incomplete information to both bilateral users. When bilateral ownership is multiple, it is more advantageous for the platform to choose a strategy that only provides incomplete information to the shipper. The optimal pricing strategies are analyzed under each user ownership situation through comparative analysis, and the conclusions obtained has strong theoretical significance and can provide some reference for practical operation.

Key words: bilateral market; network freight platform; incomplete information; Hotelling model; pricing strategy