• Journal of Information Technology Services
• /
• v.10 no.2
• /
• pp.75-94
• /
• 2011

The industrial ecosystem around the Internet services has been evolving since the Internet was first introduced. The Net Neutrality issue best represents the process of the evolution and presents an inevitable challenge that the industry should overcome. This paper deals with this structural change with the Two-Sided Market framework and provides a System Dynamics(SD) model to evaluate the economic implications of the net neutrality policy. In particular, our approach analyzes the policy impacts when two competing platforms (network providers) play a role of the platform in a typical two-sided market, which connects Content Providers(CPs) with users. Previous studies show that the indirect network externality between these two markets makes the entire system tip to one platform. When the multi-homing in the CP market is allowed as in our model, however, their argument may lose its validity. To examine the system behavior, conducted here is SD simulations of our model. The simulation results show that co-existence of the competing platforms persists with the network effects over a certain threshold. The net neutrality policy seems to lower the threshold based on our experimental outcomes.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
• /
• v.18 no.4
• /
• pp.109-119
• /
• 2017

This paper is to analyse empirically using the data collected from Korea portal Naver's ad management system and show online ad platform may not be two-sided market. It is aim of this study to propose the appropriate approach to define the market, based on the empirical result. Here are two research questions to be reviewed. First, is there any consistency between business model of search advertising and definition of two-sided market which Rochet-Tirole proposed in 2006? Second, do indirect network externalities exist significantly in search advertising market? if so, this study is going to estimate the level of it through empirical measurement. Based on Luchetta's paper which suggested that google may be one-sided market, it performed the correlation & regression analysis to prove his suggestion. The result is that online search advertising costs increased by more than 50 won when advertisers increased by one unit. However, there was no significant correlation and regression between the search frequency and online search advertising cost. It means that there is little possibility to identify two-sidedness in online search advertising service(market) because of no(or little) indirect network externalities which are a necessary condition for two-sided market. This result has three implications, such as the availability to adapt traditional market definition tools to online search advertising market, the possibility enhancement to find the fundamental competition elements in defined market and promotion of the powers of persuasion in competitive market reality. It is significant that the gap between legal scholars including regulatory practitioners and economists can be overcome to some extent. who have shown the different perspective on the two-sided market.

• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• v.16 no.1
• /
• pp.35-69
• /
• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.38 no.2
• /
• pp.159-178
• /
• 2013

We present a model, combining servitization decision and a conventional two-sided market approaches, to understand expected outcomes and current market situations. We suppose an individual manufacturer participates in multiple platforms and decides whether to initiate servitization by considering latent profitability and risk. The analytical results from the model show that increasing competition within servitized companies lead to a servitization equilibrium, wherein the ratio of servitized companies in a market is stable, due to a gradual decline in relative benefits compared to non-servitized companies. This holds even in the case that the number of customer is increasing along the diffusion of servitization, under some restricted conditions.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.31 no.4
• /
• pp.105-123
• /
• 2006

Previous research on two-sided markets has, for the most part, concentrated on indirect network externalities between buyers alto sellers. This paper considers direct competition effect among sellers and among buyers as well as indirect network externalities. We develop an analytic model of C2C e-marketplaces and examine whether a monopolistic incumbent could successfully deter new entry into its market. We find that the effect of the number of sellers or buyers on the price of goods depends on whether sellers have decided to sell the goods using an auction or fixed pricing rule and on the characteristics of the goods. We argue that when the effect of the number of sellers on the price of goods is significantly larger than that of buyers, there is a high possibility of entry. In particular, we show that entry becomes more difficult to deter as fixed-price format is adopted more frequently or the proportion of collectables is relatively low.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.35 no.4
• /
• pp.55-79
• /
• 2010

This study deals with a model for platform competition in a two-sided market. We suppose there are both direct and indirect network externalities between suppliers and users of each platform. Moreover, we suppose that both users and suppliers are distributed in their relative affinity for each platform type. That is, each user [supplier] has his/her own preferential position toward each platform, and users [suppliers] are horizontally differentiated over [0, 1]. And for analytical tractability, some parameters like direct and indirect network externalities are the same across the markets. Given the parameters and the pricing profile, users and suppliers conduct subscription game, where participants select the platform that gives them the highest payoffs. This game proceeds according to a replicator dynamics of the evolutionary game, which is simplified by properly defining gains from participant's strategy in the subscription game. We find that depending on the strength of these network effects, there might either be multiple stable equilibria, at which users and suppliers distribute across both platforms, or one unstable interior equilibrium corresponding to the market tipping in favor of either platform. In both cases, we also consider the pricing power of competing platform providers under the framework of the Stackelberg game. In particular, our study examines the possible effects of the type of competition between platform providers, which may constrain the equilibrium selection in the subscription game.

• Journal of the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
• /
• v.34 no.1
• /
• pp.85-100
• /
• 2009

An online marketplace, such as eBay, is an example of two-sided markets. In online marketplaces, there are transactions between sellers and buyers and direct competition effects among sellers and among buyers. Previous research on two-sided market has not handle these competition effects and mostly focused on indirect network externalities between sellers and buyers. We analyze the fee structure of an online marketplace considering direct competition effects among sellers and among buyers. We find that when fees for sellers and buyers can be imposed, an auction or fixed-pricing rule can be chosen according to the characteristics of a product traded. But when only fees for sellers can be imposed, an auction can be taken as a trading mechanism solely.

• Proceedings of the Korean Operations and Management Science Society Conference
• /
• 2006.11a
• /
• pp.437-452
• /
• 2006

Previous research on two-sided markets has, for the most part, concentrated on indirect network externalities between buyers and sellers. This paper considers direct competition effect among sellers and among buyers as well as indirect network externalities. We develop an analytic model of C2C e-marketplaces and examine whether a monopolistic incumbent could successfully deter new entry into its market. We find that the effect of the number of sellers or buyers on the price of goods depends on whether sellers have decided to sell the goods using an auction or fixed pricing rule and on the characteristics of the goods. We argue that when the effect of the number of sellers on the price of goods is significantly larger than that of buyers, there is a high possibility of entry. In particular, we show that entry becomes more difficult to deter as fixed-price format is adopted more frequently or the proportion of collectables is relatively low.

• Proceedings of the Technology Innovation Conference
• /
• 2006.02a
• /
• pp.78-102
• /
• 2006

Networks, services and industries have been converging with the advent of digital convergence by technology advancements of digitalization, broadband and interactivity in the areas of information-communication and broadcasting technologies. Especially, this convergence of technology and market has been blurring the boundary of telecommunication and broadcasting sectors, and the severe competition seems to be inevitable due to the lack of the differentiation in broadcasting media and contents. In this study, we regard the competition phenomenon in the digital convergence between telecommunication and broadcasting as the platform competition in two-sided markets which have been actively studied since 2000, and analyzed it using modified Hotelling's location model. According to the analysis of platform competition on the effects of the differentiation of platform (t) , killer component $(\mu)$ and component compatibility $(\theta)$ , it is shown that two differentiated platforms are simultaneously used in case of the decrease of substitution effects, and the profit of platform with killer contents is increased, but the profit of platforms with higher compatibility is decreased. The policy implication is that it is especially necessary to modify the policy and regulation on media contents considering the growing competition in media. On the other hand, differentiated and reasonable policy is required to make fair competition and active market environment.

• Korean journal of communication and information
• /
• v.64
• /
• pp.5-30
• /
• 2013

This paper conceptualizes the two-faced platform based on interface studies and two-sided market theory to critically analyze today's information technology culture such as the Internet. With this conceptual framework, the Internet can be investigated to have two faces, in which the square of user's openness, sharing, and participation is unfold on the front face, whereas the market of tracking, surveillance, and control of user's activities is formed on the other face. The two faces contradictorily coexist, resulting in technological and cultural dynamics on the Internet. Therefore, the Internet today as a two-faced platform can be described as a square-market interface. By analyzing on transformation of the web architecture, shift of informational commodity from content to data, and web bugs' user tracking across two faces, it examines how the world wide web itself can function as a two-faced platform. Lastly, implications and further works are suggested to improve the two-faced platform as a conceptual framework and to deeply analyze broader information technology culture based on it.