Pricing Strategies of Online Games in Taiwan

• Main Authors: Li-Han Chen, 陳立漢
• Other Authors: 巫和懋
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/50435791478385712399

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 國際企業學研究所 === 94 === Pricing strategy for strong network product such as online games is difficult. Qualitatively, we all know if we increase the product’s price, there will be fewer buyers, and vice versa; however, to quantitatively set the optimal price for online games is not easy - the complexity arises from the network interactions between players and complicated human behaviors. In order to solve this pricing difficulty, we have constructed a simulation framework to analyze the impacts of different pricing strategies for online games under various scenarios. This simulation framework is based on agent-based simulation technique, and the behavioral attributes of player agents are obtained by conducting the survey from the target consumers. We have demonstrated that, under certain simplifications and assumptions, our experimental approach provides some interesting results on the pricing strategy issues for online games. 1. The optimal price always exists. 2. Choice of pricing scheme is heavily influenced by service variable cost. 3. While reaching certain level of product interest, there is no need to spend more money on advertising. 4. Increasing social network size or introducing expansion pack helps to extend the product life cycle and improves profit. 5. Within certain simulation scope, the competition only partitions the market share, and the stronger product does not overpower the weaker one. 6. As competition intensifies, the stronger products will easily crash the weaker product. Finally, we have encountered interesting Chaos-like behavior in our simulations – small differences in the earlier process can cause dramatically different outcomes.