Research On Pricing Strategies Of Information Products On UGC Platform

With the development of information technology and the improvement of user knowledge level,user participation plays an increasingly important role in platform development.Some media platforms have opened up ways for users to create and upload content in order to obtain content resources from users.The various forms of content created by users and available to other users via website are called usergenerated content(UGC).This paper puts forward the UGC reward model,that is,the media platform rewards users with virtual currency to obtain UGC,and then users purchase information products of the platform with virtual currency.UGC reward model can be regarded as a way for the platform to encourage users to upload UGC,and also as a way for the platform to sell information products.UGC can bring value to the platform,but the acquisition of UGC at a cost of cash profit from selling information products.This article examines when it is beneficial to offer UGC reward model and how platforms to operate sales strategies based on UGC reward model.This paper establishes a Stackelberg game between a monopolistic media platform and its users.First,the platform can offer pay-per-view,subscription and UGC reward models at will and set the unit price and subscription fee.Then users choose any sales model to meet their own needs according to the maximization of their consumer surplus.Finally,the Stackelberg game is solved by backward induction.The main conclusions of this paper are as follows:First,when the value of UGC is large enough,a profit-maximizing platform should provide UGC reward model,regardless of the difficulty of generating UGC.Second,the platform needs to decide on a mixed sales strategy based on UGC reward model according to the benefit-cost ratio of UGC,that is,offer a pay-per-view model and a subscription model in addition to UGC reward model.In addition,when the value of UGC increases,platforms should raise unit price and subscription fee;When the difficulty of generating UGC increases,the changes of prices are more complicated.Finally,this paper also finds that if the value of UGC is greater than a certain threshold and the difficulty of generating UGC is relatively small,providing UGC reward model can realize Pareto improvement of both platform profits and consumer welfare.This paper organically combines the research on UGC incentive mechanism and information product pricing,and expands the research on these two aspects.On the one hand,this paper considers the user’s demand for platform products as the motivation factor of UGC.On the other hand,this paper regards UGC reward model as a way to sell information products,and analyzes the impact of the introduction of UGC reward model on the sales and pricing strategies of pay-per-view and subscription models,which enriches the theory of information products pricing.