| This dissertation elaborates the background, significance, and definition of the digital content industry, as well as its present situation of development in China and throughout the world and investigates background of the industry amalgamation aroused by the digital content industry. Besides, it summarizes the formation model and characteristics of the digital content industry chain and also describes the formation and distribution of digital content industry chain in detail. Finally, analysis on cooperative and competitive relationships of industrial chain is involved and also on issues of strategy settlement and proportion change in certain strategy adoption between the content providers and content distributors based on Evolutionary Game Theory. On the basis of above analyses, this study deals with the stability, income distribution, costs and income levels of the whole industry chain. Details are as follows:1. The buds of DCI appeared in the convergence of traditional industries in its phase of maturity and decline and information industry. Specifically, on the basis of three networks convergence and under the joint actions of technical progress, market demand, and relaxation of regulation, traditional industries like publishing, media, radio, television and film, cultural education penetrated with industries like communication, internet, information technology, and electrical information, and blurred the boundaries among them thus realized integrations of technology, market, management and policy of regulation and produced new industry. Therefore, DCI is the result of industry convergence and there is coherence between connection and expansion of DCI chains and the process of industry convergence. The development of the digital content industry evolved through three stages:(1) convergence of three networks and digital publishing as representatives;(2) Sub-industries involved in convergence expanded to fields and industries like software, film, advertisement, news and communication. Information processing technology, digital film technology, and digital media technology are representatives;(3) Upspring of technology application and digital content service, predominated by technologies of mobile internet and electronic information. Factors affecting DCI chains include three aspects—technology, market and enterprise while formation of DCI belongs to a kind of mixture mode, characterized by three features:marketing transaction, vertical integration and quasi-market.2. Enterprises of DCI chains launch various value-added activities under the guidance of the core conception of "content". DCI has typical characteristics of the service industry, driven by the demands of users. Users are the final decision-makers of content products.DCI distribution channels need strong technological support and service of connections between content and technology. Therefore, links and their internal relationships DCI chains involved are quite diverse and complicated. This essay makes a detailed research on the basic forms of DCI chains, dissects formation, distribution, participants and upstream and downstream relations, and elaborates features of DCI chains:(1) demand-oriented (2) complex network link (3) user-centric position (4) two-way extension. Besides, the essay proposes that there are three possible dominant modes of DCI chains:content provider-dominant mode, network operators-dominant mode, and terminal providers-dominant mode. Separately, their features are:content provider-dominant industry chains are on the basis of perfect intellectual property protection and they have the full right to choose and decide on distribution channels; network operator-dominant industry chains is aimed at integrating content providers and terminal providers into its platform, and continuously enhancing the dependence of content providers and terminal providers on network channels; In terminal providers-dominant industry chains, terminal operators are allowed to establish contact with the content providers by making full use of terminal advantages and to obtain the maximum of income, as a result, to realize channelization of network operators.3. In DCI chains, according functions of participants, DCI chains can be divided into two camps:content providers and content distributors. The former includes digital content creators, copyrights service providers and digital content providers, application service providers and the latter can be divided into two types, one is for universal terminals such as Internet companies, Internet operating units, communications network operators, digital cinemas, radio and television companies and the other is for specific terminals. In addition, users can receive the digital content products in three ways:the traditional Internet channels, mobile Internet channels, and non-network channels. The essay chooses Evolutionary Game Model to analyze competition and cooperation relationship of DCI chains for the following reasons:(1) Due to various factors, participants of the industry chains often have certain blindness, are affected by past modes and conceptions of production or worry about the uncertainties in the process of industrial development, and their rationality assumptions of Evolutionary Game Theory are in accordance with circumstances of dealing with complex issues in reality of the complex issues dovetailing into industrial development;(2) The replicator dynamics in the framework of Evolutionary Game Analysis is suitable for the research on the longer-term economic relations among large number of individuals in the real economic situation and industrial development is also a gradual, ever-changing long-term process.(3) The conclusions drawn from Evolutionary Game Mode reveal the relationship of cooperation and competition among participants in the industry chains, as well as issues on stability and development trends of the whole industry chain. In order to fully study the relationship among participants of DCI chains, the paper presents the analytical framework of Evolutionary Game Theory. Industry chains can be described as the structure of "content provider-content distributors-user". Content providers and content distributors are two nodes of the industry chains, which represent two groups. There are two kinds of game relationships of DCI chains, one is the vertical game relation, that is, the relations among upstream and downstream content providers and content distributors; the other is the horizontal game relations among downstream content distributors.4. From the perspective of vertical industry chain, the essay investigates the game relation between upstream content providers and downstream content distributors, which are regarded as two different groups of nodes of industry chains. They have two strategies to choose:co-operation and non-cooperation. The essay studies the replication dynamics and evolutionary stable strategy of a limited rationality evolutionary game model, points out that the evolutionary game between content providers and content distributors presents two Evolutionary Stable Strategies(ESS):one is (1,1), indicating100%chance of co-operation among groups and the other is (0,0), indicating100%chance of competition. In terms of industry chain development, the ESS (1,1) is the optimal strategy. Therefore, in order to enhance the cooperation between upstream and downstream and further improve the stability of industry chains, the following methods can be used:(1) reduce cost input of enterprises;(2) adjust the proportion of income distribution;(3) increase the gross income. There is an optimal proportion of income distribution, sharing some numerical relations with cost input of both sides. In reality, the cost of content distributors changes in different stages:at the initial stage of distribution channel construction, the investment is always very large, and after operations run smoothly, the cost input falls while the investment of content providers is being maintained at a high state. Therefore, in order to obtain the maximum probability of cooperation at different stages, the distribution ratio should be adjusted. It is predicted that with the maturity of industry development, sharing ratio of content providers will gradually increase to a certain value. The essay also analyzes the present state of content distributor market of DCI in China, and points out only through breaking up monopolies of content distributors, adjusting the overall sharing ratio, providing content providers with interests they deserve to, and encouraging content innovation can we build a healthy and sustainable environment for the industry.5. From the perspective of horizontal industry chain, the essay studies game relations among content distributors and reveals that content contests become the root of the competition among content distributors. Content distributors have two strategies to choose:to compete for the content resources or to give up. Two models have been established to investigate issues of evolutionary games:symmetrical for content distributors of the same group and non-symmetrical for content distributors of different groups. This essay finds out that the ESS (1,1) means the percentage of competing for content resources can reach100%. In the development process of the digital content industry, subject to factors like policy, cost risk of distribution platform construction, copyright disputes and the degree of market demand, content distribution business groups unlikely adopt competition strategy and compete actively for digital content resources at the very beginning. Some of them choose to give up while watching and waiting, and later adjust their strategies through the observation on other content distributors and finally enter into the state of competition among all distributors. Diversity of Content distributor group formations promotes the full competition state of development, ensuring the stability of the industry chains. The essay also points out that content distributors have two possible evolutionary ways: single-group partial competition—single-group perfect competition, and single-group competition—double-groups partial competition—double-groups perfect competition. The two ways can correspond to different stages of industry development in reality, indicating the law of industry chain growth.6. Based on the characteristics of cost constitution of digital content products, this essay builds both static and dynamic models of three channels of content distribution, and mainly focuses on game relations among release distribution of digital content products on the three channels. It also recognizes that the circulation cost is an important factor affecting the amount of investment in DCI. It is not wise to distribute and invest blindly for the sake of maximum profits. Besides, it indicates, by analyzing this model, the reason for gradual shrinking of non-network channels, and points out the crux of industry development, for instance, network operators carry out their business through traditional Internet and mobile Internet at the same time, between which conflicts are often caused. Therefore, in order to achieve maximum benefits, we’d seek for a good balance between investment control and circulation cost.Finally, this dissertation summarizes conclusions, theory innovation and practical significance, and also points out limitations and future prospects of research. |
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