The E-commerce Pricing Model of Digital Information Goods

• Main Authors: Li-Han Kao, 高立翰
• Other Authors: Li-Ping Alfred Cheng
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2002
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/gsx6k2

碩士 === 世新大學 === 經濟學系 === 90 === As a result of Internet to promote the development of E-commerce, lots of businesses expect to obtain profit by providing information goods. However, the pricing strategy of relative products was incapable to achieve the goal. Therefore this research is based upon the characteristics of the businesses under the process of obtaining profit, which have to face user’s self-selection and integrate material and virtual platform, trying to use Ramsey pricing rule and the concepts of quality difference, products standardization, and user’s opportunity cost of transferring to other products, to derive the optimal markup pricing model of information goods under the condition of maximizing total social surplus. According to difference assumptions, this research could also explain the major affect factors in the basic and advanced models. In terms of products discussed in basic model, under the assumption of which if the quality marginal cost affected by fixed cost, it also could be discussed as if the products provided with market standardization. Under the circumstance of products provided with market standardization, the markup pricing would be affected by producer’s opportunity cost of producing products with different quality and the price elasticity of user’s valuation at the same time. If the products provided without market standardization, in addition to above factors that would affect markup pricing, also include the quality elasticity of user’s valuation, quality elasticity of fixed cost of business, and the ratio of fixed cost over gross profit of products. Second, using the concept of two-part tariff, this research derives the advanced model further by considering the constraint business’s net profit, or the opportunity cost of users who transfer to other products. Similarly, using the assumption of which if the products provided with standardization, as the products provided with standardization, the markup pricing will affected by producer’s opportunity cost of producing products with different quality, price elasticity of user’s valuation, and also the quality elasticity of user’s valuation at the same time. If the products provided without standardization, not only the above factors but also have to consider the fixed cost factors affected by the degree of quality elasticity of user’s valuation. In the part of case study, this research will separate information goods as three categories of types, namely: functional, content and platform. Then cases are selected, including Trend Technology, ITIS-MIC, and Microsoft as target business for analysis. By analyzing producer’s products pricing strategy, this research succeeds to generalize a consistent conclusion with theoretical models. It also explains when businesses face different market circumstance, if they use product composite, product transferring, or product efficiency pricing model separately as their pricing strategy, then business could achieve their profit goal, and also achieve to induce the maximization of total social surplus.