Pricing Strategy And Opening Model For Online Ride-hailing Platform

As the service center of passengers and drivers,ride-hailing platform provides efficient matching services for two side users,the three constitute a typical Two-sided Markets.A ride-hailing platform could adopt full opening model with which the platform only recruits the private car drivers and provide travel services,and the platform extracted service commission.Under the trend of intelligent and customization of vehicle,ride-hailing platforms(e.g.,Didi)have begun to transform from full opening to partial opening model.In the full opening model,the platform could recruit selfowned car drivers to provide services for passengers by using customized vehicles on the platform,in addition to recruiting the private cars.Recruitment of self-owned car drivers on the platform can improve service quality,but it will increase the cost of the platform.Therefore,it is urgent for the platform to explore appropriate opening model and optimal pricing mechanism to promote the healthy development of the ride-hailing platform.In this thesis,the optimal opening model and pricing strategy are analyzed respectively in the monopoly and duopoly market environments.First,by introducing the factors of the ride-hailing industry such as waiting cost and commission rate,this thesis studied the opening model selection of a monopoly online ride-hailing platform considering the impact of waiting cost,and discussed the influence of different models on the optimal price,user scale,platform revenue and consumer surplus.The results find that when the fixed waiting cost of passengers is high or low,the platform should adopt a full opening model.However,when the fixed waiting cost is moderate,the partial opening model can yield a win-win outcome for the platform revenue and consumer surplus.In addition,this thesis also find that the platform commission rate and vehicle rental have a negative impact on the optimal price,if the fixed waiting cost is high,the network externality has a positive impact on the optimal price.Second,by establishing a game model,analyzed the equilibrium opening models of duopoly online ride-hailing platforms under the influence of vehicle cost and selfowned driver’s size,discussed the impact of related factors on the equilibrium price and platform revenue,and also discussed the influence of different opening model combinations on the consumer surplus.The results show that when the cost of vehicle cost is very high(or very low),the two platforms can achieve market equilibrium by both adopting fully opening model(or partial opening model).When the vehicle cost is moderate,if the size of self-owned drivers in the market is large,the platforms will achieve equilibrium by adopting different opening models;otherwise,the platforms will achieve equilibrium by choosing the same opening model.In addition,pareto improvement may be achieved if both platforms adopt full opening strategies.Finally,the thesis also finds that the two platforms can obtain the highest consumer surplus by adopting different opening models.