Study On Pricing Of Information Goods

The special cost structure of information goods, high fixed cost and low marginal cost, makes the information goods hold suppliers' economy of scale, and the network externality of information goods make it hold demanders' economy of scale. These features challenge the pricing of information goods. The traditional cost-based pricing strategies aren't suitable to the information goods. The suppliers of information goods must apply value-based pricing strategies to get more profit.Firstly, the paper defines the information goods and analyzes the features of information goods and participators of information industry, then, with the general theories and methods of pricing, the paper analyzes and summarizes the decision-making flow of the information goods pricing strategies. With this, the paper emphatically analyzes the two value-based pricing tactics of information goods: the discrimination pricing and the bundling pricing.Due to the system and network effects of information goods, the most important thing in competition of information industry is not the market share, but the standard. So the suppliers' correct strategy is very important in gaining the positive position in the standard decisions or even the standard wars. The right pricing tactics will take effect in standard strategies. The paper analyzes some available pricing tactics that can be used in standard strategies.In information industry, due to the co-action of suppliers' and demanders' economy of scale, the monopoly is inevitable. Monopoly is per se innocent, but when the suppliers make use of monopoly to exploit consumers or to restrain innovation, monopoly is illegal and must be eliminated. Several topics of this paper, in varying degrees, concern this affair. The paper analyzes how to deal with the anti-trust regulation.The paper refers and cites the previous general pricing theories and methods, adopt qualitative analysis combined with quantitative analysis methods to establish the decision-making flow of information goods pricing strategies. This paper research is useful in the practice of pricing information goods. In addition, the analyzing and modeling methods used in the paper can be extended to other fields in practice, such as semiconductor chip industry and telecom industry.