雙邊平台競爭策略工具探討

Endogenous Mode of Competition in a Platform Market

本文探討雙邊平台之競爭策略工具。本研究與既有文獻之差異在於發現不相容雙邊平台進行授權費競爭可能為一均衡結果。此外，市場均衡結果可能為消費者福利最適，但必不為社會福利最適。

This research analyzes incompatible platforms’competition mode choices, specifically content quantity versus license fee, in a traditional competitive bottleneck set-up with single-homing users and multi-homing content developers. The main contribution of the paper to the literature is showing that license fee competition can be an equilibrium outcome even when competing platforms are incompatible, which sharply contrasts with the result in the existing literature that price competition can be an equilibrium outcome when the degree of network compatibility is sufficiently large. Regarding social desirability, we present the following two findings contrary to conventional wisdom. First, the market outcome with license fee competition could align with consumers’surplus optimum, but the market outcome cannot align with the social welfare optimum, regardless of whether the platforms compete in license fees or content quantities. Second, asymmetric competition could be optimal for consumers’surplus. Keywords: Competition Mode, Content Quantity, License Fee,