A Study On The Digital Content Distribution Platform And Business Model

Internet has created a new world-wide technology platform. A variety of new types of digital content, service, organization have been produced based on this platform. The Internet has stimulated the information revolution, and promoted the new application areas of the information system and the generation of new business models. Due to the rapid development of information technology, information has grown explosively on the Internet. Rich information resources lead to the lack of attention. Thus, many third-parties appear on the Internet.Third-parties help transactions between consumer and content provider, obtain the income by providing a platform or playing a brokering role, and result in a variety of transaction patterns in digital content market. These third parties need to seriously consider how to make the best use of the Internet to create the most effective operation model. Against this background, the digital content distribution platform and business model increase the concerns of a great deal of scholars and enterprise managers.But how best to rely on the ICT technology infrastructure to realize the further commercial development is a big challenge for digital content distribution platform. And how to build a business model, adjust business model to harmonize the relationship among the various members, and explore the interests allocation mechanism of the network economy, are the topic which today we need to consider earnestly.In this dissertation, mathematical models based on market microstructure theory, transaction costs theory, information economics theory, and microeconomics theory, and so on, and other methods are used to study digital content distribution platform and business model. And this dissertation proposes the design methodology of digital content distribution platform: "service idea→business model→platform function set→system structure".Firstly, the origins and the backgrounds of the business model and market microstructure theory are introduced. And the necessity and significance of studying business model and market microstructure theory are explained.Then, the market microstructure theory is used to prove the efficiency of digital content distribution platform, to theoretically support the service idea values of digital content distribution platform (to create value and capture value).From the perspective of the service idea values of digital content distribution platform (to create value), two basic property models are established: comparing the impact of the platform way (charging service fees) to the impact of ownership changes way (bid-ask) on its benefits, and proving that its benefits depend on the value creating for consumers and content providers. Thus lay the foundation for the following chapter's discussion.The reduction transaction cost model is introduced, which analyzes existence and operating model of the platform, and theoretically proves that the platform will appear when benefits from the platform transaction exceed the direct transaction.The information asymmetrical model is developed, which proves the platform earnings depend on the proportion of high-quality digital content, low-quality assessment to digital content of both buyer and seller, and the service fee of high-quality buyers and sellers charged by platform, and explains the need of platform for coexisting of high-quality and low quality digital contents in order to maximize the benefits, and the asymmetry phenomenon of service fee that platform charges for low-and high-quality products and service. From the perspective of the service idea values of digital content distribution platform (to capture value), considering the Network Externalities, six pricing models are founded, which is used to analyze the nature of six pricing models to the platform by comparing the six pricing way. And those six pricing models can help platform select which pricing model from those to maximize the benefits.Next, based on the service idea values of digital content distribution platform (to create value and capture value), and combined with the characteristics of digital content and characteristics of third-party services as the e-commerce businesses, definition of business model of digital content distribution platform is advanced, and so do the digital content distribution platform business model structure dimensional model "OVRGN" based on the fractal dimension theory and digital content distribute platform general structural model "XYOVRGNHJI" by increasing two related dimension.Business planning of digital content distribution platform is divided into the platform strategy, business model, business processes, and resources and the capacity four levels. And by comparing platform business planning hierarchical structure to information system structure model, the business planning hierarchical structure model of the digital content distribution platform is introduced.In addition, based on digital content distribution platform business model and its structure dimensional model "OVRGN", the functions set of digital content distribution platform is defined, so as to found the IPCDN logic model which combine P2P, DRM and CDN, which includes the digital content distribution platform network-level logic structure model and the digital content distribution platform function logic hierarchical structure model.After these definitions of Agent, Ontology, and the SOA-based Function Agent; this dissertation designs the Agency component hierarchy model, which includes five types of Agent that achieve different functions, and designs two KMS system models to simulate the KMS application based on the Agency component hierarchy model and Function Agent, so as to presents system level model of the digital content distribution platform.Finally, the full text main content and the innovations are summarized, and the directions for further research are pointed out.