• 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 the Korean Society for Library and Information Science
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• v.35 no.2
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• pp.151-170
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• 2001

Pricing for e-journals has become more complex than before-certainly much more complex than print pricing has ever been. E-journals charge either a fiat fee based on print, user, library size, usage, and combination. A survey of publisher's pricing structure found that print based model is popular followed by user based model. The current pricing situation is far from equitable and can be improved if publishers can be coerced to change their pricing practices. This study focus on a number of possible pricing models that may supplement and/or possibly replace the current print based model. With the possibility that its pricing will eventually be based strictly according to usage, may lead to the most equitable pricing model as well as the most efficient use of society's resources. Libraries can alleviate the pricing problem by encouraging library organizations and university consortia to exploit their potential monopoly power into a bilateral monopoly situation.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.63 no.7
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• pp.889-895
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• 2014

Korea electric power industry had been under vertical monopoly but is typically getting restructured for free competition. An ideal pricing system under the competitive market system is 'unbundled pricing system' and 'marginal pricing system', but the current pricing system still adheres to the traditional bundled system and the average cost pricing system. Especially, progressive electricity rates for residential use reflect governmental policy-making which is focused on income redistribution & welfare, industrial supports and energy saving. This study proposes new and reasonable residential electricity pricing systems which are Time-Of-Use (TOU) and Real-Time Pricing (RTP) to reflect variations in the wholesale price of electricity. It also presents examples of various tariffs for residential electricity pricing systems.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2003.07a
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• pp.646-648
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• 2003

Distribution pricing has been one of keystones of ongoing deregulation and privatization process in power industries. The electricity market has been established based on open access and nondiscriminatory use of the Distribution assets. As Distribution business remains as a monopoly, it is necessary to provide economic regulation. This paper focuses on the distribution pricing methods using by Incremental Marginal Cost and Yardstick Regulation.

• Asia pacific journal of information systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.1-19
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• 2013

The market for commercial open source software (OSS) has been rapidly growing with the proliferation of OSS. One way to commercialize OSS is the support model, which has been adopted by leading OSS firms such as Red Hat and JBoss. Despite the growing interest in OSS commercialization, little research has provided OSS support providers with a pricing guideline. In this paper, we examine the optimal pricing strategies for OSS support providers. Our benchmark is a monopoly case in which we investigate a startup software vendor's incentive to choose the OSS support regime over the proprietary one. Then we extend the model to a duopoly case in which OSS under the support regime competes against proprietary software. We characterize the conditions under which the OSS support model is viable under competition. We believe that our results offer insights to the OSS vendors who consider commercializing their OSS with a support model.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2002.07a
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• pp.401-403
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• 2002

Transmission and Distribution(T&D) pricing has been one of keystones of ongoing deregulation and privatization process in power industries. The electricity markel has been established based on open access and nondiscriminatory use of the T&D assets. As T&D business remains as a monopoly, it is necessary to provide economic regulation. This paper focuses on the distribution pricing methods and the analysis of pricing structure of distribution-retail sale company under power system deregulation.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.7 no.1
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• pp.207-234
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• 2018

A manufacturer of a durable good typically purchases supplies, including parts for assembly - that are also useful for repairs - from independent "original equipment suppliers" with which it contracts. The manufacturer is a branded monopolist of its final assembled product. To put into effect also a monopoly of the replacement parts, it must stipulate in its arrangements with independent suppliers of the parts that they not supply such patented parts to any other buyer. Durable good owners would then only be able to obtain their requirements of replacement parts from the same company that supplied the durable. This would amount to a tie-in of replacement parts to the direct purchase of new durables. And that describes the apparently widespread practice of automobile manufacturers in India, as exposed in a recent case before the Competition Commission of India (Samsher Kataria v Honda Siel Cars India Limited and others). Here, I will argue that such tie-in enabled automotive manufacturers to more fully appropriate consumer surplus, which induced them to lower the price of new cars, sell more cars and also sell more repair parts. The tie-in expanded the auto parts industry and promoted new entry. The main restraint on expansion of India's automotive manufacturing is not monopoly. It is government protection in the form of tariffs on automobiles and auto parts.

• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.25 no.1
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• pp.55-98
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• 2003

This paper examines the hypothesis that states consolidation and concentration within Korean banking industry have impaired competition and escalated market power of banks. Competition is measured using Bresnahan-Lau method, which estimates a structural model consisting of a demand function and a supply function of banking services, based on aggregate monthly data of January 1996 to December 2002. Estimations indicate that pricing behavior of Korean banks during the period is consistent with perfect competition, and they behave more competitively even after the increase in concentration ratio. The results imply that, contrary to the concerns over the potential for monopoly power, bank competition may not be damaged by the consolidation.

• Journal of the Institute of Electronics and Information Engineers
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• v.50 no.2
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• pp.11-19
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• 2013

Internet service providers regulate the maximum data transmission rate of each user as a means to provide a tiered Internet access service or to avoid the monopoly of a few greedy users. In this paper, we aim to analyze the impact of this access rate regulation on the revenue of Internet service provider and the pricing strategy. We first propose a service quality model taking into account the access rate regulation, and analyze how the regulation affects the service subscription decision of users. In addition, we derive a sufficient condition that guarantees the stability of the revenue, and formulate an optimization problem that finds the optimal price to maximize the revenue.

• Proceedings of the KIEE Conference
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• 2001.07a
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• pp.553-555
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• 2001

It is required to develop a rational transmission tariff structure to ensure the fair participation of the player in the market where transmission sector remains as a monopoly after the electricity industry restructuring. The objective of this study is to suggest an improved transmission rate system which classifies the line capacity into line usage and reliability capacity based on their purpose of use and reasonably allocates the costs incurred by each of them to users.