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Chinese Journal of Management Science ›› 2025, Vol. 33 ›› Issue (10): 166-175.doi: 10.16381/j.cnki.issn1003-207x.2022.2788

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Content Exclusivity Strategies for Platforms under Different Consumers' Awareness

Xinjie Cao, Weijun Zeng()   

  1. International Business School,Hainan University,Haikou 570228,China
  • Received:2022-12-30 Revised:2023-05-18 Online:2025-10-25 Published:2025-10-24
  • Contact: Weijun Zeng E-mail:wjzeng@hainanu.edu.cn

Abstract:

Digital technology promotes the development of platform-based content ecology. With continuous enrichment of its content, the incumbent platform is increasingly known by more and more consumers, while the entrant platform gets less awareness and attention from the consumers. The new content exclusivity competition between an incumbent platform and an entrant platform under different consumers’ awareness of the platforms is analyzed. In particular, the exclusive purchase of the new content by the entrant platform can increase its consumer awareness. By solving the content purchase game between the two platforms and analyzing the corresponding equilibria, it is found that, if the exclusive purchase of the new content cannot significantly improve the consumers’ awareness of the entrant platform, then the incumbent platform has the higher exclusive bidding power; otherwise, the entrant platform has the higher exclusive bidding power. Interestingly, facing deterrence of the exclusive purchase of the entrant platform, the incumbent platform may purchase the new content even though its profit declines with the purchase. On the other hand, the entrant platform never purchases the new content simultaneously with the incumbent. Only when the entrant platform has the higher exclusive bidding power will it be possible to enhance its competitiveness by seizing the new content that the incumbent platform cannot buy. For policy maker, the difference in the consumers’ awareness between the two platforms can be reduced to enhance the social welfare especially when the incumbent platform has the higher exclusive bidding power but the purchase of the new content does not significantly enlarge the content utility gap between the two platforms. Moreover, the entrant platform should be encouraged to purchase the high-value new content to compete against the incumbent platform, which can further improve the social welfare. It contributes to research on content exclusivity strategies for platforms by considering different consumers’ awareness for the competing platforms in this study.

Key words: content platform, consumers’ awareness, consumers’ multi-homing, platform competition, content exclusivity strategy

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