• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.161-176
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• 2013

This study discusses some features observed in Korean credit card industry, which is classified as a two-sided market. First, I summarize six characteristics or conditions that two-sided markets possess by reviewing related literatures, and consider if we can find out those peculiarities in Korean card industry. Second, this study casts light upon the unique issues which have not been handled in previous studies, that is another two-sidedness in mature two-sided markets. In the context of credit card industry, this additional two-sidedness is created by specific consumers group existing in entire consumer group in a card firm as a form of subset and specific partnering merchants group offering special benefits to their subset consumer group, or alliance card holders. This concept gives new idea that there could be multiple two-sidedness especially in mature two-sided markets, which will be significant to platforms' pricing strategies and expand the scope of related studies.

• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 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 Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.162-169
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• 2018

Net neutrality, which has not been a problem, has recently become a problem for ISPs (Internet Service Providers), and their complaints have been paid by domestic platform companies, but overseas global IT companies such as Google and YouTube, generate huge revenues from domestic markets. In this situation, domestic IT companies claim that it is natural to impose more expensive charges or restrict speed on users who generate huge traffic. On the other side, however, the telecommunication network has become an essential public good that is essential to our everyday life, and because it has been given a monopoly position by a private company to efficiently respond to the explosive demand for telecommunication services, It is necessary to provide equal and universal service and fulfill public duty. In this paper, we deal with the network neutrality problem, focusing on the price elasticity between the CP (Contents Provider) and the ISP, rather than the user who is one side of the two-sided market for the already saturated satellites communication market. We present a game model that determines the optimal price for each platform by Nash equilibrium and analyze how the net neutrality affects CP according to the change of exogenous variables through the proposed game model.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.55-65
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• 2021

The purpose of this paper is to present the Over-The-Top (OTT) platforms' strategies for two-sided markets. For this, we examine six strategic factors influencing OTT's success in Korea. The analysis reveals, among six OTTs, Netflix utilizes five strategic factors except the same-side network effects. OTTs from pay TV operators and channel providers tend to block the cross-side network effects on the opponent OTTs, because they think their giveaway to content providers is in vein, if the invested content by them would be consumed on opponent rival platforms. Interesting is that after experiencing a negative association between the market entry of Netflix and the subscription revenue growth rate of pay TV services, pay TV operators utilize the same-side network effects by offering hybrid services in partnership with global OTTs like Netflix, Disney+ which are considered as a complementary OTT. In conclusion, it is suggested to target a new connected TV based OTT service offering with collaboration with Korean TV device manufacturers for Korean OTTs' global strategy, because Netflix-like global market expansion is not easy for them to cover their content cost.

• Journal of Korean Institute of Industrial Engineers
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.387-396
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• 1995

For situations where there are several markets with different profit/cost structures, an economic two-sided screening procedure using a correlated variable is developed. It is assumed that the performance variable and the screening variable are jointly normally distributed. A profit model is constructed which involves selling price, cost incurred by imperfect quality, and screening inspection cost. Methods of finding the optimal screening procedure are presented and numerical examples are given.

• Journal of Information Technology Services
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.75-94
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• 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 the Korean Operations Research and Management Science Society
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.105-123
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• 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
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• v.34 no.1
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• pp.85-100
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• 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.

• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.49-65
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• 2018

This paper illustrates the competition between the mobile pay and credit card systems by utilizing the theory of two-sided markets. Two firms, as platforms, maximize the profit collecting fees from consumers on one side and from retailers on the other side. Consumers pay to buy goods and services with mobile pay, credit card, or cash. The basic model is one that each platform maximizes its profit. We show that the fees for credit card holders and retailers are higher than the respective costs. The fee for retailers of the mobile payment is higher than its cost, while the buyer's fee may be higher or lower than its cost. Applied model is the one that employs the delegation game model. The total profit of the mobile pay system is composed of its profit and the weighted demand for the mobile pay. It is shown that buyers' fee under the applied model is lower than that under the basic model, resulting in an increase of the demand for the mobile pay. The fee for the retailers rises, albeit the sum of fees for the buyers and retailers falls. The profit for the mobile pay system is increased, while that for the credit card company stays the same.

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