Download or read book Trial and Pricing Strategies of Software Market with Competition and Network Effects written by Zhenhua Wu and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 45 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this paper, we develop a framework to generally characterize the equilibrium trial and pricing strategies of oligopoly software market, when there exist competition, network effects (externalities), uncertainty on software functionality, network maintaining cost and compatibility issues. We find that, in equilibrium, the restriction on network effects is decreasing with network effects, but increasing with consumers' basic willingness to pay. Meanwhile, the restriction on functionality is increasing with the posterior on the functionality after trial. The equilibrium price has a non-linear relation with the equilibrium network effects in a monopoly market and a market with completely incompatible software. However, the equilibrium price is set to maintaining cost in a market with completely compatible software. Moreover, we find that incompatibility could generate an equilibrium under which identical firms choose different trial and pricing strategies, and all consumers who want to purchase software are divided by firms on the market.
Download or read book Modeling Software Markets written by Falk Graf Westarp and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As social beings, humans are not living in isolation but rather interact and communicate within their social network via language, meant to convey parts of some conceptualization from the sender to a single recipient or a set of recipients. Communities of agents not only share a common language but also the individual conceptualizations of the world (real and abstract) have to overlap to a significant extent, allowing for efficient reference to whole conceptual structures like "the German constitution", "game theory" or "medical sciences". For "societies" of interacting technical devices or software agents the situation is not quite as Babylonian since although these agents are meant to act individually (and also have a private state and private knowledge) in most cases they are designed to refer to one common ontology or standardized protocol and thus do not have to deal with misunderstanding. However, the more these systems become interconnected, the more this situation resembles the one described for societies of human agents even though the misunderstanding might be easier to detect when the different reference ontologies are made explicit and published. Obviously, in both cases standardization of a common language or set of rules for interaction reduces the individual degree of freedom for the sake of compatibility and benefits derived from interaction. In his work, Falk Graf von Westarp addresses the software market as a domain strongly depending on compatibility effects of the individuals' decisions.
Download or read book Free Trial Or No Free Trial written by Hsing Kenneth Cheng and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A common business strategy to promote product adoption in software industry is to provide a free trial version with limited functionalities of the commercial product to increase the installed user base. The increase of user base will lead to higher value of the software because of positive network effects. However, offering a free trial version may cannibalize some demand of the commercial software. This paper examines the tradeoff between network effects and the cannibalization effect, and aims to uncover the conditions under which firms should introduce the free trial product. We find that when network intensity is strong, it is more profitable for a software monopoly to offer free trial than to segment the market with two versions of different qualities. In addition, this paper solves the joint decision problem of finding the optimal quality for the firm's free trial software and the optimal price of its commercial product. Finally, we analyze the impact of competition on a firm's decision of whether to offer free trial in a duopoly market.
Download or read book Digital Transformation Challenges and Opportunities written by Wooje Cho and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-03 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 16th Workshop on e-Business, WeB 2017, which took place in Seoul, South Korea, in December 2017. The purpose of WeB is to provide an open forum for e-Business researchers and practitioners world-wide, to share topical research findings, explore novel ideas, discuss success stories and lessons learned, map out major challenges, and collectively chart future directions for e-Business. The WeB 2017 theme was “Digital transformation: challenges and opportunities”. The 11 papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 43 submissions. These are original research articles with a broad coverage of behavioral issues on consumers, citizens, businesses, industries and governments, ranging from technical to strategic issues.
Download or read book Two sided Markets Pricing and Network Effects written by Bruno Jullien and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 100 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The chapter has 9 sections, covering the theory of two-sided markets and related empirical work. Section 1 introduces the reader to the literature. Section 2 covers the case of markets dominated by a single monopolistic firm. Section 3 discusses the theoretical literature on competition for the market, focusing on pricing strategies that firms may follow to prevent entry. Section 4 discusses pricing in markets in which multiple platforms are active and serve both sides. Section 5 presents alternative models of platform competition. Section 6 discusses richer matching protocols whereby platforms price-discriminate by granting access only to a subset of the participating agents from the other side and discusses the related literature on matching design. Section 7 discusses identification in empirical work. Section 8 discusses estimation in empirical work. Finally, Section 9 concludes.
Download or read book Valuation of Network Effects in Software Markets written by Andreas Kemper and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2009-12-12 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The customer base is an important value driver of software companies and a reliable prediction of its development is fundamental for investment decisions. A particularity in software markets is that an individual’s purchasing decision is often influenced by other users’ choices. Although such customer network effects are evident, their quantitative assessment remain elusive with conventional approaches. This book contributes to closing this gap by developing methods for measuring network effects and their implications for valuation in software markets. Based on the theory of complex networks the book reveals that such diffusion processes highly depend on structural properties of customer networks. Moreover, it depicts that such insights are contributions to improve the quality of valuations in software markets. But the implications of this research also comprise social and political aspects as they can be applied in order to prevent corporate failures in all network effect markets.
Download or read book Optimal Software Free Trial Strategy written by Hsing Kenneth Cheng and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many software firms offer a fully functional version of their products free of charge, for a limited trial time, to ease consumers' uncertainty about the functionalities of their products and to help the diffusion of their new software. This paper examines the tradeoff between the effects of reduced uncertainty and demand cannibalization, uncovers the condition under which software firms should introduce the time-locked free trial software, and finds the optimal free trial time. As the software firm has the option of providing free trial software with limited trial time with full functionalities or limited functionalities for unlimited time, we develop a unified framework to provide useful guidelines for deciding which free trial strategy is preferred in the presence of network externalities and consumer uncertainty.ow that the time-locked free trial is favorable when the intensity of network effect is modest.
Download or read book Price Competition in Two Sided Markets with Heterogeneous Consumers and Network Effects written by Lapo Filistrucchi and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We model a two-sided market with heterogeneous customers and two heterogeneous network effects. In our model, customers on each market side care differently about both the number and the type of customers on the other side. Examples of two-sided markets are online platforms or daily newspapers. In the latter case, for instance, readership demand depends on the amount and the type of advertisements. Also, advertising demand depends on the number of readers and the distribution of readers across demographic groups. There are feedback loops because advertising demand depends on the numbers of readers, which again depends on the amount of advertising, and so on. Due to the difficulty in dealing with such feedback loops when publishers set prices on both sides of the market, most of the literature has avoided models with Bertrand competition on both sides or has resorted to simplifying assumptions such as linear demands or the presence of only one network effect. We address this issue by first presenting intuitive sufficient conditions for demand on each side to be unique given prices on both sides. We then derive sufficient conditions for the existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium in prices. For merger analysis, or any other policy simulation in the context of competition policy, it is important that equilibria exist and are unique. Otherwise, one cannot predict prices or welfare effects after a merger or a policy change. The conditions are related to the own- and cross-price effects, as well as the strength of the own and cross network effects. We show that most functional forms used in empirical work, such as logit type demand functions, tend to satisfy these conditions for realistic values of the respective parameters. Finally, using data on the Dutch daily newspaper industry, we estimate a flexible model of demand which satisfies the above conditions and evaluate the effects of a hypothetical merger and study the effects of a shrinking market for offline newspapers.
Download or read book Networks Crowds and Markets written by David Easley and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-07-19 with total page 745 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are all film stars linked to Kevin Bacon? Why do the stock markets rise and fall sharply on the strength of a vague rumour? How does gossip spread so quickly? Are we all related through six degrees of separation? There is a growing awareness of the complex networks that pervade modern society. We see them in the rapid growth of the internet, the ease of global communication, the swift spread of news and information, and in the way epidemics and financial crises develop with startling speed and intensity. This introductory book on the new science of networks takes an interdisciplinary approach, using economics, sociology, computing, information science and applied mathematics to address fundamental questions about the links that connect us, and the ways that our decisions can have consequences for others.
Download or read book Microsoft on Trial written by Luca Rubini and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2010-01-01 with total page 561 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Microsoft on Trial analyses the antitrust cases that have involved Microsoft in both sides of the Atlantic and offers a thorough and timely discussion on the regulation of unilateral behaviour in a topical sector. This fascinating and highly topical book facilitates discussion on the difficult technical, legal and economic issues with respect to innovation,competition and welfare raised, through the span of more than a decade, by the US and EC Microsoft antitrust cases. It assesses their impact on the evolution of EC and US laws on competition and intellectual property in the IT sector and beyond.
Download or read book Two Sided Pricing and Endogenous Network Effects written by Mei Lin and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper examines a monopoly platform's two-sided pricing strategies in a setting with seller competition, which gives rise to not only positive cross-side network effects between buyers and sellers, but also a negative same-side network effect among sellers. We show that platform pricing depends crucially on the characteristics associated with the market as a whole (i.e., the two sides combined) rather than a comparison between the two sides' demand elasticities and/or network effects as suggested by existing studies. Regardless of originating from the buyer side, the seller side or both, changes in a parameter induce the platform to raise the buyer entry fee and lower the seller entry fee if and only if the parameter change directly increases the total surplus of the platform economy.
Download or read book The Economics of Platforms written by Paul Belleflamme and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-11 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Digital platforms controlled by Alibaba, Alphabet, Amazon, Facebook, Netflix, Tencent and Uber have transformed not only the ways we do business, but also the very nature of people's everyday lives. It is of vital importance that we understand the economic principles governing how these platforms operate. This book explains the driving forces behind any platform business with a focus on network effects. The authors use short case studies and real-world applications to explain key concepts such as how platforms manage network effects and which price and non-price strategies they choose. This self-contained text is the first to offer a systematic and formalized account of what platforms are and how they operate, concisely incorporating path-breaking insights in economics over the last twenty years.
Download or read book Network Effects Nonlinear Pricing and Entry Deterrence written by Arun Sundararajan and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A number of technology products display positive network effects, and are used in variable quantities by heterogeneous customers. Examples include operating systems, infrastructure and back-end software, web services and networking equipment. This paper studies optimal nonlinear pricing for such products, under incomplete information, and with the threat of competitive entry. Both homogeneous and heterogeneous network effects are modeled. Conditions under which a fulfilled-expectations contract exists and is unique are established. While network effects generally raise prices, it is shown that accompanying changes in consumption depend on the nature of the network effects - in some cases, it is optimal for the monopolist to induce no changes in usage across customers, while in others cases, network effects raise the usage of all market participants. Optimal pricing is shown to include quantity discounts that increase with usage, and may also involve a nonlinear two-part tariff. These results highlight the impact of network effects on trade-offs between price discrimination and value creation, and have important managerial implications for pricing policy in technology markets. The need to deter competitive entry generally lowers profits for the monopolist, and increases customer surplus. When network effects are homogeneous across customers, the resulting entry-deterring monopoly contract is a fixed fee and results in the socially optimal outcome. However, when the magnitude of heterogeneous network effects is relatively high, there are no changes in total surplus induced by the entry threat, and the price changes merely cause a transfer of value from the seller to its customers. The presence of network effects, and of a credible entry threat, are also shown to increase distributional efficiency by reducing the disparity in relative value captured by different customer types. Regulatory and policy implications of these results are discussed.
Download or read book Essay on Network Effects Consumer Demand and Firms Dynamic Pricing written by Rong Luo and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation includes three chapters on estimating structural economics models. My research focuses on empirically study consumers' utility from different products, the impact of network effects on consumers' demand for products, and multi-network firms' dynamic pricing strategies. The three chapters share the same feature of estimating a discrete choice demand model, but differ in the static versus dynamic setting and the underlying economics question and strategic behaviors that I'm interested.Chapter 1"The Operating System Network Effect and Telecom Carriers' Dynamic Pricing of Smartphones."The utility a consumer realizes from owning a smartphone increases with its operating system (OS) network size. Due to this OS network effect, multi-network telecom carriers have a different pricing strategy for smartphones than the single- network manufacturers in a dynamic environment. While manufacturers choose higher prices for larger networks, carriers, who can internalize competition across OSs, have incentives to choose lower prices for larger networks. The carriers' pricing strategy contributes to the increasing smartphone users and OS concentration. In this paper, I first analyze a theoretical model to compare the pricing strategies of the carriers and manufacturers. Then I design a structural model of consumers' demand and the carriers' dynamic pricing game for smartphones, and empirically study the impact of the OS network effect and carriers' two-year contract policy on the smartphone market penetration and OS concentration. I estimate the model using product level data from August 2011 to July 2013 in the US. I deal with the empirical challenges of dynamic prices for multi-product carriers, high dimension continuous state variables, and asymmetric oligopolistic firms in the estimation. The results show that the OS network size has a positive and significant impact on consumer utility. I then study two counterfactual cases in which I eliminate the OS network effect and the carriers' pricing strategy, respectively. I find that, without the OS network effect, the smartphone penetration rate would decrease by 54.7% and the largest OS share difference decrease by 31.7% by May 2013. Without the carriers' pricing strategy, the penetration rate would decrease by 29.1% and the OS market share difference decrease by 11.2%.Chapter 2"The Operating System Network Effect and Consumers' Dynamic Demand of Smartphones with Two-Year Contracts."This paper studies consumers' dynamic demand of smartphones on two-year wireless contracts. Individuals' demand decisions are affected by the improving quality and changing prices of smartphones, and the OS network effect, and their current smartphone contract status. Consumers need to pay high early termination fees if they end active contracts. The dynamic demand model in this paper incorporates the evolving choice set, prices, endogenous OS network sizes, and the termination policies in the smartphone industry. The preliminary results find that the OS network effect is large and significant. In addition, compared with dynamic model results, a static demand model tends to underestimate the OS network effect and overestimate price coefficient.Chapter 3"Store Brands and Retail Grocery Competition in Breakfast Cereals."This paper empirically analyzes the impacts of store brands on grocery retailers and consumers in the market for breakfast cereals. On the supply side, store brands help a retailer to avoid direct competition with other retailers and change the set of retailer's products. On the demand side, introducing store brands changes the national brands prices and consumers' choice set. We analyze the effects via demand estimation for a single grocery store chain Dominick's at Chicago in 1997 and counterfactual exercises. The estimation results show that consumers' unobserved utility of buying at a competing retailer is higher for consumers that value national brands, and is lower for ones that value Dominick's store brands. This is consistent with the claim that store brands help a retailer to avoid competition. The counterfactual calculations show that the profit loss from removing store brands is higher if the retailer has more competitors, with a median loss of 4.33% of profits from cereals. Existence of store brands increases national brands prices and consumer welfare increases slightly when store brands are removed.
Download or read book Competing on Freemium written by Kevin Boudreau and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page 35 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Freemium” product strategies--where a free basic version of a product is offered alongside a full “premium” paid version--are often used by companies to attempt to increase the size of their user base and benefit from network effects. However, there is limited empirical evidence of how this strategy impacts company performance. We investigate empirically how the strengthening of network effects on the Apple App Store influenced the revenues generated by market leaders and followers, contrasting firms that use paid only versus freemium strategies. We find that stronger network effects did not on their own lead to greater revenue for market leaders w.r.t. followers. However, in settings where freemium strategies were used, network effects greatly amplified the advantage of leaders over followers.
Download or read book Elgar Encyclopedia of Pricing written by Andreas Hinterhuber and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2024-07-05 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Elgar Encyclopedia of Pricing presents a holistic view of cutting-edge topics, practical insights, and global perspectives on pricing. In-depth entries cover everything from behavioral pricing and artificial intelligence to sustainability pricing strategies and dynamic online pricing.
Download or read book Competition in the Evolving Digital Marketplace written by United States. Congress. House. Committee on the Judiciary. Subcommittee on Courts and Competition Policy and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: