| The platform grows at an incredible speed and scale,two-sided market platform represented by Google,Amazon,Apple and Alibaba highlight platform models advantage,platform has become a new model for enterprise development and competition.Most of the world's top 500 companies operate as platform and become platform leaders in the specific field.The platform has touched various industries,and traditional enterprises begin to transform and build platform,energy industry is speeding up to construct platform,some coal trading centers in China have started to operate in platform mode.The Coal Trading Center is an internet-based coal spot trading platform,which assembles coal trading users and coal industry related resources such as logistic service providers and finance service providers,who interact and trade on the electronic trading system and co-create value on the platform together.The convenience of building a platform and developing business on the Internet facilitates the fast growth of coal trading center,more and more coal trading center platform emerges,showing good momentum of development and construction speed.At present,dozens of different types of coal trading centers have already built up throughout the country,and many coal trading centers are being built.Coal trading center establishes easily with such an unprecedented speed,but only few coal trading centers operates in two-sided market platform model,and the successful operators are seldom among them,most coal trading center platform are hard to survive.Coal trading center is typical two-sided market platform.Two-sided market platform are products or services that link different user groups in the two-sided market,two-sided users interact on the platform or via the platform.The specialty of the development of two-sided market platform is that it needs to gather a certain number of two-sided users to interact on the platform in a certain time in order to achieve critical mass required for platform survival,otherwise,the platform will be difficult to grow.In order to survive,the platform needs to use the network effect to improve the increasement of two-sided users and gradually develops into a platform-centric business ecosystem.Therefore,in the initial stage of establishing the coal trading center platform,it is crucial important to promote the platform's rapid development through platform marketing by creating platform attractiveness and competitive advantage.Marketing model of two-sided market platform has a greater difference to conventional product marketing and service marketing.Platform marketing for Coal Trading Center has the following characteristics: the first is that Coal trading center exists and operates in the form of business ecosystem,business ecosystem is holistic,platform marketing should follow holistic marketing concept,all platform marketing activities and pricing should consider the holistic business ecosystem.Marketing related activities,process and strategies should consider holistic thinking and holistic perspective,considering marketing activities of one side may have the implications to the other side within business ecosystem.The second is that platform marketing involves multiple stakeholders,but certain groups have the same interest demands,so marketing activities conducted by certain groups shall be in the form of collective marketing.Collective marketing treats certain types of interest groups equally and forms a fair,justice and equal mechanism,which promotes users and service providers to form a long-term commitment with platform.The third is that platform marketing activities and rules are jointly participated by service providers in order to encourage supplier's innovation.Service suppliers and platform provider service for trading users,service suppliers should participate in platform marketing mechanisms and activities planning in order to enhance the interests of service providers,incentive service providers to involve in the platform governance and co-create value with platform.The fourth is that platform marketing needs build a credit system.Uses of Coal trading center trade a special commodity--coal which need large amount of fund and transaction process is complicated,so users and service providers should establish a trust assesment system and development incentive mechanism to form risk-sharing awareness.Fifth,the network effect can spontaneously increase the number of bilateral users,user number's incensement in one side to enhance the value of the platform,then to attract the participation of users on the other side;platform marketing should stimulate the network effect and promote the rapid growth of the coal trading users and service providers.The components of platform marketing of coal trading center include: platform marketing objectives making,market segmentation,target market selection and platform positioning,making and execution platform marketing mix,and platform marketing mix is an important part of platform marketing.Based on the above characteristics of platform marketing of the coal trading center,how to conduct platform marketing in its initial stage,how to develop appropriate marketing strategy in a specific target market,how to design a specific product,service or solution to meet mutual needs,how to develop an effective promotion strategy in order to quickly educate users to understand,interact and transact on the platform,and how to utilize the bilateral requirement dependence to stimulate the network effect,all above are hot topics in academic field.There are abundant of platform marketing theory and platform pricing study at home and abroad,but the study combines with commodity platform especially coal trading center platform are seldom.There are still some thesis need to be researched,mainly include three sectors,the first is the research of platform marketing mix,the second is the complex network relationships management among platform,users and service providers,and the third is the reasonable platform service pricing of coal trading center and its impact on platform long term and short term development.Based on the two-sided marketing platform and platform marketing theory,the research of the paper summarizes as follows:(1)The first part analyzes the characteristics of platform marketing of coal trading center and the component of platform marketing mix of coal trading center.The paper defines the concept of platform marketing,analyzes the significant difference between product marketing and service marketing and platform marketing.The paper analyzes the characteristics of platform marketing of coal trading center,and proposes the component of platform marketing mix of coal trading center.(2)The second part of the paper analyzes the five component of platform marketing mix of coal trading center: solution(Solution),platform access(Access),platform value(Value),platform education(Education),platform value(Value)and platform stakeholder relationship(Relationship).The paper uses a questionnaire survey to collect large data and build structural equation model of the five component of platform marketing mix of coal trading center to analysis and demonstration the relationship between the five elements.The paper selects Solutions(S),platform access(A)and education(E)as external variables,selects platform value(V),platform stakeholder relationship(R),short-term growth(D)and platform long-term development(L)are internal latent variables.The research shows solutions(S),platform access(A)and education(E)have a significant impact on platform value(V)only through platform stakeholder relationship(R),it validates the importance of platform stakeholder relationship(R).Platform stakeholder relationship(R)is essential for platform marketing,the paper proposes coal trading center SAVE-R platform marketing mix: Solution(S),Platform Access(A),Platform Value(V),Education(E),Platform Stakeholder Relationship(R).The model also verifies the importance of platform value(V)in the platform marketing mix.(3)The third part of the paper designs SAVE-R platform marketing mix of the coal trading center platform.Based on the characteristics of coal trading center and holistic marketing concept,the paper designs a standard solution that can be tailored and customized according to user's needs,platform solutions constantly adjusts according to user needs and platform development.Platform access is the interface and interaction point between user,service provider and platform,platform access is also diffusion channel of platform,the access design should reflect the standardization,stability,security,simplification,integrity and interactivity,and platform interface regulate and governance.The paper identifies that platform pricing should be made according to the business ecosystem development and holistic value,and then proposes the possible platform pricing method.Using valuable content educates and guides user and service provider to experience platform and build feedback mechanisms.Establish,maintain and enhance stakeholder networks relationship and enhance bilateral loyalty and platform value,and explain the ways of stakeholder relationship management.(4)The fourth part of the paper researches on the impact of platform service fee pricing on platform short term survival and long term development.Structural equation model results validate the importance of platform value(V)to SAVE-R Platform Marketing Mix of coal trading center.The paper builds the platform service fee pricing model of coal trading center based on the holistic value of business ecosystem,simulate the effects of platform service fee pricing on platform short-term growth and long-term business ecosystem development.The results show that the lower the service fee charged by the coal trading center,the higher the willingness of the users to participate and the better the development of the platform;the higher service fees charged by the coal trading center,the slower the development of the trading center,and may even gradually die.The initial size is also relevant,when the initial size is large,the service fee charges will not lead to die of platform,but platform development speed will decrease.At the same time,if the platform has larger users,slightly changes of the service fee are not sensitive.When the number of users reach to a certain scale,near critical mass,the business ecosystem value is significantly improved.From surviving and growing point of view,platform should reduce service fee in order to expect higher development speed,and platform should put more emphasis on the coal buyers in order to survive in the beginning dangerous period.Coal trading center platform also has fixed cost,pricing decrease will reduce short-term platform profit,but it will attract more coal trading users to participate in the platform services,stimulate the platform network effect,and enhance the number of buyers and sellers and service suppliers who are important to trading center's business ecosystem establishment.Coal trading center gains more revenue from platform scale than from service fee,so it is possible to reduce service fee in order to obtain high profits from the rapid development of platform scale.(5)The fifth part of the paper is to apply SAVE-R platform marketing mix of coal trading center and coal trading center platform pricing model to Inner Mongolia Coal Trading Center.Combined with Inner Mongolia Coal Trading Center of practical experience,the paper analyzes and designs platform marketing objectives,market segmentation,targeting,positioning,then detailed design SAVE-R platform marketing mix of coal trading center,and highlight suppliers relationship management,encourage the service suppliers to participate in the coal trading center platform governance,participate and organize collective actions.The main innovations of the paper include:(1)The paper proposes SAVE-R platform marketing mix of coal trading center based on the holistic marketing concept of business ecosystem,validates the relevance between component R(relationship)and SAVE elements,and demonstrates that relationship(R)is an important part of platform marketing mix of coal trading center.(2)The paper builds a platform service fee pricing model based on the holistic value of business ecosystem of coal trading center,analyzes and stimulates the effect of platform service fee to the short-term platform survival and long-term platform development of coal trading center.(3)The paper applies the SAVE-R platform marketing mix of coal trading center to Inner Mongolia Coal Trading Center,designs Inner Mongolia Coal Trading Center platform and verifies the effectiveness of the SAVE-R platform marketing mix and platform service fee pricing model. |
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