Abstract

Product innovation and service upgrades are effective measures for firms to improve their competitiveness. Considering the upgrading of the installed customers (IU), the upgrade strategy of a platform firm usually follows two principles, namely, the derived principle (i.e., the basic product still operates when the new derived product is released) or updated principle (i.e., the basic product stops operating when the new product is released). This study investigates whether an upgraded strategy considering IU is beneficial to the platform and which upgrade principle is preferred by platforms in a two-sided market. To explore the optimal upgrade strategy of a platform, we set up a monopoly model and propose three upgraded strategies: the traditional strategy (which does not consider IU), the updated strategy and the derived strategy. The updated strategy can be seen as a discrimination price between the installed and potential buyers. However, the derived strategy helps the platform to classify the buyers into low- and high-end ones. Compared to the traditional strategy, the platform will get higher commission profit and lower membership profit by using the strategies considering IU.

摘要

产品创新和服务升级是企业提高竞争力的有效措施。考虑到已安装客户（IU）的升级，平台公司的升级策略通常遵循两个原则，即派生原则（即，在发布新派生产品时基本产品仍在运行）或更新原则（即，当新产品发布时，基本产品停止运行）。这项研究调查了考虑IU的升级策略是否对平台有利，以及在双面市场中平台更喜欢哪种升级原理。为了探索平台的最佳升级策略，我们建立了一个垄断模型，并提出了三种升级策略：传统策略（不考虑IU），更新策略和派生策略。更新后的策略可以看作是已安装购买者与潜在购买者之间的区别价格。但是，派生策略可以帮助平台将购买者分类为低端和高端。与传统策略相比，使用考虑IU的策略，该平台将获得更高的佣金利润和更低的会员利润。