Research On The Problem Of Identifying The Dominant Market Position Of Internet-platforms

Internet and digitisation have fundamentally altered the way of social life and of economic development.In combination with information and communication technology has digitisation led to new possibilities of business models.One of them ist Internet-Platform.Platforms create a huge of business value and have been essential component of digital market.Platforms also create the major challenges for competition policy.The abuse of dominant market position by market dominant huge Internet-Platforms to hinder competition for their own interests has been a common problem in the antitrust law.The precondition for the Intervention of competition authority is identifying the market dominance.The concept of market power ist used to assess the measure of market concentration and market dominance.The digital economy and platform model have altered the economic and legal basis such that the tradition measures and criterial for dominance need to be adjusted.Besides the Introduction und Conclusion this paper will be structured in three parts:In the first part the theory of two-sided market will be introduced.Platforms exhibit two-sidedness because they connect two or more different identified groups of users.Among these groups of users exist network effects.Besides network effects extrem economies of scope and lock-in effects are also key characteristics of two-sided markets.A summary of the characteristics of platforms helps to understand the functioning of the platforms model and the way the market dominance is shaped.The second part will focus on the market definition in digital market.Prices play a small role on platforms while network effects are present.The traditional methodsfor defining relevant market are not applicable for platforms.Market definition aims to find the relationships of substitutability.It's important for the calculation of market share and identifying market dominance So they have to be adjusted.One of the biggest problem is how we treat these different groups of users: are they ought to be treated as a complete unit so that just one market for entire platform should be defined,or we should define separate markets for each side of the users.Here play the method of market definition from German Competition Authority a special role and it is worth learning.In the third part the market dominance of platforms should be analysed.Traditionally,market power has been measured by market shares,i.e.by the ratio of scales of firm to the total sales in the markets.But in digital markets there are network effects and lock-in effects,the price do not necessarily represent the value of good or service and normally zero.So the market shares play a different role.In the case of platforms,network effects,economies of scope,lock-in effects,data access and innovation reinforce the difficulty of market entry so that the measuring of market power are complex.In the discussion I will concentrate on the legislative and practical experience in German,which adopted the theory of two-sided market and exhibits the way of the functioning of network effects.The problem in the Interim Provisions on Prohibiting Abuse of Dominant Market Power and in the Expert's Revise Proposal for Chinese Anti-Monopoly Law will also be pointed out and give some suggestions.