Research On The Pricing Strategy Of Value-added Service Of Crowdfunding Platform

Crowdfunding has gradually become an important investment and financing model of Internet finance,playing an increasingly important role in the financing system of China’s start-ups and small and micro enterprises.With the rise of crowdfunding in the financial,academic and civil society,China’s crowdfunding platforms are springing up like mushrooms after a spring rain.The traditional crowdfunding platform only plays the role of financing intermediary,and its profit model is very simple.At present,some platforms have begun to try to provide valueadded services to crowdfunding project initiators to change the existing profit model of the platform,but there is still a lack of theoretical basis for pricing how platform managers price value-added services.This paper takes crowdfunding platform as the research object and studies the pricing of value-added services provided by the platform based on the two-sided market theory.This paper first describes the development background of crowdfunding,and uses literature research methods to summarize and sort out literature related to crowdfunding,bilateral markets and value-added services in detail.It also focuses on the construction of crowdfunding mode and lists the possible forms of value-added services in crowdfunding.Secondly,based on the two-sided market theory,this paper constructs an optimization model with profit maximization as the goal,and analyzes the optimal pricing structure and optimal pricing strategy before and after the platform provides value-added services under the single platform monopoly situation.The results show that:(1)In the case of single platform monopoly,the pricing of crowdfunding platform is closely related to the utility that project initiators get from the platform.The more utility the project initiator gets from the platform,the higher the platform pricing.(2)After providing value-added services,the pricing of the platform is still closely related to the utility obtained by the project initiator from the platform,and the pricing of the platform will increase,as well as the profit of the platform will increase;Then,based on the two-sided market theory,this paper constructs a Hotelling model to describe the competition between the two platforms,and analyzes the optimal pricing structure and optimal pricing strategy before and after the platform provides value-added services in the duopoly competition situation.The results show that:(1)Under the duopoly competition situation,the optimal pricing of crowdfunding platform is closely related to the transportation cost and the cross-network utility that project initiators contribute to investors.The greater the cross-network utility that the project initiator contributes to the investors,the lower the platform pricing.(2)Crowdfunding platforms should take the lead in adopting value-added service business model in the competition.Crowdfunding platforms that take the lead in providing value-added services can set higher prices and obtain higher profits compared with rival platforms.(3)After one platform takes the lead in providing value-added services,the optimal pricing of the crowdfunding platform is closely related to the transportation cost,the cross-network utility contributed by the project initiator to the investors,the project success rate,the utility coefficient of value-added services and the marginal cost of value-added services.When the utility coefficient of value-added services is large relative to the marginal cost of value-added services,the crowdfunding platform that takes the lead in adopting the business model of value-added services should make the highest level of investment.In this case,the pricing of the platform should pay more attention to the utility brought by value-added services to the project initiator without considering the marginal cost.(4)If the marginal cost of value-added services is large,the crowdfunding platform that takes the lead in adopting the business model of valueadded services should lower its pricing,and the other platform that does not adopt this model should raise its pricing.If the utility coefficient of value-added services is large,the crowdfunding platform that takes the lead in adopting the business model of valueadded services should raise the price,while the other platform that does not adopt the business model should lower the price.Research significance of this article is from the perspective of bilateral market,explores the raised platform of value-added services pricing problems,from the perspective of the real management for the raised platform should provide value-added services and value-added services pricing problems provide some guidance,from the perspective of the theory of academic widened the raised areas and bilateral market research train of thought.