ABSTRACT Offering promotional programs is a common strategy for firms to induce consumers to make purchases. This paper investigates promotional programs in the market of cloud computing. We identified the following two popular forms of promotional programs for cloud computing services in this paper: the coupon and the free trial promotional program. We first studied the cloud provider’s promotional strategies in the market with complete information and identified the conditions under which each promotional strategy is optimal. The results show that targeted promotional programs are more profitable than untargeted programs. Further, the provider should offer a targeted coupon program in the case of a higher usage cost, weaker network effects and a lower quantity of clients’ tasks to process. In addition, this paper explores the case of incomplete information and finds that the provider will offer untargeted coupons, untargeted trials, or no promotional programs for optimal profits. Finally, this paper studies the scenario in which clients are uncertain about the valuations of the cloud service a priori. We show that trial programs will be more advantageous under such scenario compared to the scenario when clients exhibit no uncertainty.

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云计算促销计划分析：优惠券还是免费试用？

摘要 提供促销计划是企业诱使消费者进行购买的常见策略。本文调查了云计算市场的促销计划。我们在本文中确定了以下两种流行的云计算服务促销形式：优惠券和免费试用促销方案。我们首先用完整的信息研究了市场上云提供商的促销策略，并确定了每种促销策略最优的条件。结果表明，有针对性的促销计划比无针对性的计划更有利可图。此外，在使用成本较高、网络效应较弱和需要处理的客户任务数量较少的情况下，提供商应提供有针对性的优惠券计划。此外，本文探讨了信息不完整的情况，发现提供商将提供无针对性的优惠券、无针对性的试用或无促销计划以获得最佳利润。最后，本文研究了客户对云服务的先验估值不确定的情况。我们表明，与客户没有表现出不确定性的情况相比，试用计划在这种情况下将更具优势。