The Research On Pricing Of Large-Scale Retailer Based On The Theory Of Two-sided Markets

Large-scale retailers appeared in the early 20th century, after a century’s development, large-scale retailers have became an important part of the retail market, as well as an indispensable part of residents’ shopping and leisure choice. In a buyer’s market, the function of the large-scale retailers is no longer just "the media of commodities exchange", but "display, compare and the media of commodities exchange", and its profit mode has also changed. Meanwhile, the profit mode of large-scale retailers and the contradictions raised from it have became the focus of the society and the academic group, this is the problem raised from the gradual transformation of large-scale retailers’from traditional retailers to two-sided market platforms. Recognizing the root of the problem and finding solutions of the problem can clear the way for the development of retail industry in China, help large-scale retailers get out of the bottleneck of their development, promote healthy development of large-scale retailers, foster national brands of large-scale retailers, narrow and eliminate the gap between the international advanced level, and become one of the most developed retail industry in the world.Firstly, this dissertation finds the weak points of pricing research of large-scale retailers through material-learning, reflects and summarizes the weak two-sided market platform attribute of large-scale retailers based on analyzing the evolution of large-scale retailers’profit mode, proposes different research perspective from traditional research on the pricing of large-scale retailers-based on the theory of two-sided markets, not only considers the charging for suppliers but also the pricing on consumers. Secondly, this dissertation builds a large-scale retailers pricing model under different market structures and analyzes social welfare by using the mathematical model method, which is mainly based on the single-homing of suppliers and consumers. Ulteriorly, this dissertation builds large-scale retailers pricing model under the condition of partially multi-homing taking into account the current situation of China’s retail market, analyze the impact on large-scale retailers’pricing of the partially multi-homing of the suppliers and consumers. Thirdly, this dissertation puts forward the revelations to large-scale retailers and the policy suggestions to relevant government departments. Lastly, this dissertation summarizes the key findings and deficiencies, and puts forward the further direction of the study.The characteristics of this dissertation are as follows, puts forward the weak two-sided market platform attribute of large-scale retailers, studies the pricing of the large-scale retailers based on the theory of two-sided markets systematically, puts forward main factors influencing the pricing of large-scale retailers, and takes all these factors into the large-scale retailers pricing model, builds large-scale retailers pricing model under the condition of partially multi-homing, analyzes the equilibrium prices of large-scale retailers under three kinds of pricing mode.The results show that the large-scale retailers have weak two-sided market platform attribute. The large-scale retailers’ pricing is different from traditional retailers’, which comprises charging for suppliers and pricing on consumers. The cross-market externalities and the partially multi-homing of the suppliers and consumers will largely affect the large-scale retailers’ pricing structure and price levels. With the development of retail markets, one part of the large-scale retailers can innovate business mode, transform into typical two-sided market platforms; the other part can improve business mode, continue its weak two-sided market platform attribute.