Research On Pricing Strategies Of Online Dating Platforms And Car-hailing Platforms

To offer theoretical guidance of platforms pricing management for China's platform companies so that they have more growth ability and profitability and can deal with market competition and sustainability better,by selecting online dating platforms and car-hailing platforms as representative business cases,this article researches pricing strategies of platform companies.The research of online dating platforms' pricing strategies suggests that:(1)The monopoly platform charges a higher price for services that bring more utility to users and can undertake price discrimination against users based on the differences of service utility that different users receive from purchasing a service.(2)The monopoly platform has motivation to strengthen cross-network externality of users to achieve the increase of user scale and platform profit.(3)The monopoly platform patronizes or subsidizes users of one side,strengthens and takes advantage of cross-network externality of this side's users as a leverage to attract users of the other side to join the platform,so as to achieve the increase of user scale and platform profit.(4)For both sides of users single-homing,when cross-network externality of one side's users strengthen,the competing platforms charge a lower price for another side's users.(5)For both sides of users single-homing,both competing platforms have motivation to offer differentiated service to distinguish,when cross-network externality of either side mitigates,or product differentiation of platforms for either side or the difference of service utilities between users joining either platform escalates.(6)For users of one side single-homing and of the other side multi-homing,the competing platforms charge a higher price for users of single-homing side and a lower price for users of multi-homing side when cross-network externality of users of single-homing side strengthens;the competing platforms charge a higher price for users of multi-homing side when cross-network externality of users of multi-homing side strengthens.The research of car-hailing platforms' pricing strategies suggests that:(1)The core of the monopoly platform's pricing strategies is to make the subsidy level of temporaray agents a half of the wage level of permanent agents.(2)The monopoly platform's subsidy level and supply level of temporary agents have nothing to do with the market status while its employment level of permanent agents depends on the market status.(3)The monopoly platform has motivation to employ more temporary agents and fewer permanent agents.(4)The competing platform has motivation to mitigate the attraction strength for temporary agents and the competition strength with another platform,and to collude,consolidate or merge to control agents and customers.(5)There is an exception in the sharing economy of car-hailing field that negates the conventional knowledge,i.e.,a monopoly offers a higher wage to its employees than a duopoly does.The exception occurs when the size of total customers is not large enough and the attraction strength of both platforms is not strong enough.