A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger

Instant messenger (IM) is one of the most popular Internet applications all over the world. This paper examines the pricing problem of IM based on two-sided market model. IM serves as a two-sided platform, which gets both Internet users and advertisers on board. This paper concludes that IM operator...

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Main Author: Jun Xu
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Wiley 2013-01-01
Series:Journal of Applied Mathematics
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/768168
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author Jun Xu
author_facet Jun Xu
author_sort Jun Xu
collection DOAJ
description Instant messenger (IM) is one of the most popular Internet applications all over the world. This paper examines the pricing problem of IM based on two-sided market model. IM serves as a two-sided platform, which gets both Internet users and advertisers on board. This paper concludes that IM operator adopts a heavily skewed price structure that favors IM users both under monopolistic case and under horizontal differentiated duopolistic case. When advertising revenue is large enough relatively to marginal cost for serving IM users, IM users can enjoy free service provided by IM operators. The competitive equilibrium of duopolistic case is not necessarily symmetric when advertisers choose singlehoming. Even in the symmetric equilibrium platform would rather deter all advertisers.
format Article
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institution Kabale University
issn 1110-757X
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publishDate 2013-01-01
publisher Wiley
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spelling doaj-art-5b1a362acb134fc69c3338d4f2db5b722025-08-20T03:35:00ZengWileyJournal of Applied Mathematics1110-757X1687-00422013-01-01201310.1155/2013/768168768168A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant MessengerJun Xu0Institute of Industrial Economics, Jinan University, Guangzhou 510632, ChinaInstant messenger (IM) is one of the most popular Internet applications all over the world. This paper examines the pricing problem of IM based on two-sided market model. IM serves as a two-sided platform, which gets both Internet users and advertisers on board. This paper concludes that IM operator adopts a heavily skewed price structure that favors IM users both under monopolistic case and under horizontal differentiated duopolistic case. When advertising revenue is large enough relatively to marginal cost for serving IM users, IM users can enjoy free service provided by IM operators. The competitive equilibrium of duopolistic case is not necessarily symmetric when advertisers choose singlehoming. Even in the symmetric equilibrium platform would rather deter all advertisers.http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/768168
spellingShingle Jun Xu
A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger
Journal of Applied Mathematics
title A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger
title_full A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger
title_fullStr A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger
title_full_unstemmed A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger
title_short A Two-Sided Market Model of Optimal Price Structure for Instant Messenger
title_sort two sided market model of optimal price structure for instant messenger
url http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/768168
work_keys_str_mv AT junxu atwosidedmarketmodelofoptimalpricestructureforinstantmessenger
AT junxu twosidedmarketmodelofoptimalpricestructureforinstantmessenger