• Asia-Pacific Journal of Business
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.17-26
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• 2020

Purpose - This paper studies the welfare impacts of behavior-based price discrimination (BBPD) when firms are asymmetric in quality improvement costs. Design/methodology/approach - To this end, we consider a differentiated duopoly model with an inherited market share, where firms first make quality decisions and then compete in prices according to the pricing scheme, namely, uniform pricing or BBPD. Findings - We show that BBPD increases social welfare relative to uniform pricing if the firms' cost gap is large enough. This is because BBPD induces more consumers to buy a high-quality product than under uniform pricing, and because a low-cost firm's profit loss from BBPD decreases as the cost difference increases. Research implications or Originality - Our analysis offers policy implications for markets where BBPD raises antitrust concerns, and quality competition prevails.

• Journal of Electrical Engineering and Technology
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1125-1131
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• 2014

Application of residential demand response (DR) programs are currently realized up to a limited extent due to customers' difficulty in manually responding to the time-differentiated prices. As a solution, this paper proposes an automatic home load management (HLM) framework to achieve the household minimum payment as well as meet the operational constraints to provide customer's comfort. The projected HLM method controls on/off statuses of responsive appliances and the charging/discharging periods of plug-in hybrid electric vehicle (PHEV) and battery storage at home. This paper also studies the impacts of different time-varying tariffs, i.e., time of use (TOU), real time pricing (RTP), and inclining block rate (IBR), on the home load management (HLM). The study is effectuated in a smart home with electrical appliances, a PHEV, and a storage system. The simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed HLM program. Peak of household load demand along with the customer payment costs are reported as the consequence of applying different pricings models in HLM.

• Journal of the Korea Convergence Society
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• v.8 no.7
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• pp.191-198
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• 2017

This study offers the possibility of a new integrated product of video technology and public culture content. The Development of 'the Urinal of Emotional Type with Screen' will introduce a new sanitary pottery product and it will be a new attempt to combine hygiene pottery product with high-tech electronic product. It is a product development idea that presents the new marketability of the sanitary pottery product with the improvement of awareness of the restroom and the idea of wit through public information notification and advertisement effect. For the commercialization of the product, the prototype will be made through a separate production process with the design of this project, through 3D rendering, 3D mockup and so on. Various product expansions can be consulted with manufacturers after that. It is a new approach of image making with high quality and differentiated pricing strategy, that targeting small-scale business, such as franchise coffee shops and liquor stores with high quality and differentiated pricing strategy, and it will lead the market trend with various marketing availability through differentiated video contents.

• Journal of Korean Society of Industrial and Systems Engineering
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.37-44
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• 2021

The information products dramatically reduce the production costs of vertically differentiated products. Information products are also more likely to be affected by network externalities. Thus the proliferation of digital products is increasing the interests in network externality and vertical product differentiation. In step with this trend, the impact of network externalities on price competition in vertically differentiated markets has been continuously studied. Existing studies related to this topic have assumed that network externalities increase consumers' willingness to pay per unit quality. The results show that higher quality products are affected more by network externality. However, network externality is essentially a concept affected by the size of the consumer, not a concept associated with quality. In this work, unlike previous studies, we present a new market model that reflects the essential definition of network externality. Based on the proposed market model, we derive both simultaneous and sequential Nash equilibria and analyze them numerically. The main results obtained from the analysis can be summarized as follows. First, network externalities primarily increase the demand for low-quality products and have a secondary impact on the demand for high-quality products. Second, the larger the quality difference between products, the more profitable they are. It also has been shown that sequential pricing methods are more advantageous in terms of revenue than simultaneous pricing method.

• Journal of Korea Technology Innovation Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.740-758
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• 2006

This paper is related to the optimal pricing of Internet Backbone Services that are differentiated according to the size of the bandwidth required for applications with different quality sensitivities, Itdiscusses IBP (Internet Backbone Provider) optimal nonlinear pricing process in the presence of a congestion externality in addition to strategic behavior by users. In this scenario, the quality of service provided may reach its socially optimal level irrespective of strategic behavior by users and may be independent of the characteristics of the applications delivered over the Internet.

• The Journal of Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences
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• v.26 no.12C
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• pp.190-198
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• 2001

In this paper, the authors propose methods for determining the differentiated price for elastic traffic in IP (Internet Protocol) network. First, we investigate the behavior in the consumption of bandwidth of elastic traffic in IP network. Next, we propose a method to relate the bandwidth usage with the pricing for the elastic traffic, which is based partially or fully on the usage rate of the network bandwidth. After that, we propose a charging function for elastic traffic, which is based on the de facto usage of the bandwidth. Finally, we will illustrate the implication of the work via simple numerical experiments.

• Journal of KIISE:Information Networking
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.103-112
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• 2006

Priority-based network service has been widely adopted for the Internet traffic management in the context of IETF differentiated services, and computing optimal prices for such priority-based service is the key topic in many pricing literature. While the equilibrium analysis has been commonly used to this end, many have criticized the validity of the underlying assumption of equilibrium analysis that user utility functions are precisely known. In this paper, we propose a solution for bridging the gap between the existing theoretical work on optimal pricing and the unavailability of precise user utility information in real networks. In the proposed method, the service provider obtains more and more accurate estimates of user utility functions from the initial imprecise knowledge by iteratively changing the price of service levels and observing the users' decisions under the changed price. Our contribution is two-fold. First, we have developed a general principle for estimating the user utility functions. Second, we have developed a novel method for setting the prices that can optimize the extraction of the knowledge about user utility functions. The extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our method.

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

• The Journal of Information Systems
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.85-115
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• 2013

Digital knowledge and information goods as experience goods have some unique characteristics such as close to zero reproduction and distribution cost, high price volatility, and low price acceptability. For the reasons, the pricing policies of digital knowledge goods are very difficult and complicate. Also, most consumers of digital goods have experienced cognitive dissonance after buying decision. The purpose of this paper is to investigate what factors affect the price acceptability level and cognitive dissonance of digital knowledge goods buyers. This paper suggest a structural model that was established by the cognitive dissonance theory and S-O-R(Stimulus-Organization-Response) model. The model is consisted of four exogenous variables and three endogenous variables. The empirical test and statistical analysis suggest following results and practical implications. The variables such as product involvement and perception of price fairness that have positive roles to price acceptability have strong influence on the all the three endogenous variables. But the variables such as sale proneness and price mavenism that have negative roles to price acceptability have little influence on the all the three endogenous variables. In the model, the payment intention was very important mediating variable between exogenous variables and two dependent variables, ie. price acceptability and cognitive dissonance. These results imply that the digital knowledge portals must have some differentiated pricing policies to the customers who have price consciousness and price mavenism. Also, they need some special promotions to whom have positive attitude to the value of digital goods.

• Proceedings of the Korea Society for Industrial Systems Conference
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• 2008.10b
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• pp.547-550
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• 2008

인터넷 서비스가 차별화 되어야 한다는 논의는 인터넷이 본격적으로 상용화된 1990넌대 중반부터 꾸준하게 제기되어 왔다. Tragedy of commons 라고 불리는 인터넷 혼잡현상은 지속적인 기술발전으로 인해서 상당부분 해결되었으나, 최근 들어서는, Web 2.0의 등장을 통해 동영상 파일이 차지하는 비중이 늘어나면서 P2P를 통한 파일교환이 전체 인터넷 트래픽의 상당 부분을 차지하면서, 또한 실시간 미디어, VoIP 등의 인터넷 응용 프로그램 등에서 전송상의 지연을 포함한 QoS 보장을 요구하게 되면서, 또한 통신사업자의 망중립성에 관한 논의가 진행되면서, 인터넷 서비스를 차별화하고, 통제하려는 연구의 중요성이 증대되고 있다. 본 연구는 인터넷 서비스를 차별화하기 위한 수단으로 기존에 제시되어온 자격과 우선순위라는 2개의 차원에서 그리고 가격제도로서 종가제와 종량제의 차원에서 배경을 검토해본 다음, 우선 대기열 이론과 혼잡성 제어 이론을 통해서 차별화된 서비스가 전체 시스템에어떤 구체적으로 효익을 가져오는 지를 검토하며, 우선순위와 사용시간에 따라 차별화되는 종량제가 현실에서 발견되지 않는 이유에 대한 이론적인 근거를 제시하고, 종량제를 채택했을 경우에 발생하는 문제점과 종량제 사용에서 발생하는 한계들을 논의하면서, 현실적으로 종량제와 차별가격을 도입할 때 발생할 수 있는 문제점들을 밝혀본다.