关键词: 产能分享, 交叉网络外部性, 定价策略, 服务水平, 双寡头竞争

Abstract: With the continuous improvement of information technology such as the Industrial Internet, the development of capacity-sharing platform has increased steadily in China. According to the “Analysis and Prospects Research Report on the Current Situation and Development Potential of China’s Shared Manufacturing Industry from 2026 to 2032”, the scale of China’s capacity sharing market increased to 1,290.8 billion yuan in 2024.This shows that capacity-sharing platform has huge room for growth and deserves more researches for providing advices for the manufacturer.
This paper studies the pricing strategies of two duopoly capacity-sharing platforms in a competitive market. The service levels of the two platforms are different. We establish the Hotelling models and discuss the pricing strategies of the two platforms in three different cases: both platforms adopt the registration-fee model, both platforms adopt the commission model, and two platforms adopt the registration fee model and the commission model, respectively. By backward induction, we obtain the optimal solutions and profits of two platforms in three different cases, respectively. Then, we analyze the pricing strategies of two platforms by calculating the first derivatives of two platforms’ profits with respect to the relevant parameters and comparing two platforms’ profits in each case.
Firstly, we find that no matter which pricing model two platforms adopt simultaneously, the impacts of two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients on two platforms’ profits are not always the same. The impacts are associated with the difference in two platforms’ service levels. We take the difference value of both the first platform’s service level and the second platform’s service level as a basis. In the first case, when this value is greater than zero and no more than a threshold, two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients have positive impacts on the profits, respectively. Otherwise, two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients have negative impacts on the profits. In the second one, when this value is greater than zero and no more than the other threshold, two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients have positive impacts on their profits, respectively. Otherwise, two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients have negative impacts on their profits, respectively.
Secondly, there are profit differences between two competing capacity-sharing platforms. In the first case, when the platform’s service cost coefficient is smaller than a threshold, the platform which has higher service level can gain more profits. Otherwise, the platform which has lower service level has a competitive advantage. Similarly, in the second one, when the platform’s service cost coefficient is smaller than the other threshold, the platform which has higher service level can gain more profits. Otherwise, the platform which has lower service level has a competitive advantage. This means that the platform with low service cost coefficient and high service level has higher operational efficiency. Such platform maintains a higher service level at a lower service cost, so that the platform has more flexibility in available funds and can further improve its service level or other functions which are beneficial to platform operation, such as supervision services for two-sided users. As a result, the platform will remain at a certain level that can provide high-quality service, which can attract more bilateral users who have higher requirements for platform services to join the platform. In other words, at this time, such platform can obtain more bilateral users to achieve the improvement of profits without increasing the service cost input, that is, the platform with a higher service level has more competitive advantages. The analysis about the contrary condition is the same.
Thirdly, two-sided users’ service-sensitivity coefficient and the platform’s service cost coefficient affect the profit difference between two competing capacity-sharing platforms. No matter which pricing model two platforms adopt simultaneously, the platforms’ profit difference is positively correlated with two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients, and negatively correlated with the platform’s service cost coefficient when the difference is positive. Otherwise, the profit difference is negatively correlated with two-sided users’ service sensitivity coefficients, and positively correlated with the platform’s service cost coefficient. This means that in a competitive market, the platform should judge whether to improve its service level to expand its competitive advantage according to its own service cost. At the same time, the platform which is in a weak competitive position can also narrow the competitive gap by improving technology to reduce the service cost coefficient and distinguish target two-sided users. Capacity-sharing platform needs to consider such factors when making pricing decisions.
This paper focuses on the capacity-sharing platforms’ pricing decisions in a competitive market and the influence of platform’s service level on their pricing decisions. But we do not consider this parameter as a decision variable or endogenous parameter. What’s more, the optimal solutions are too complicated for us to make a detailed analysis in the third case. In the future, we will try to establish a new model by considering platform’s service level as a decision variable or endogenous parameter, and optimize our model to obtain more analyzable results.

Key words: capacity sharing, cross-network externality, pricing strategy, service level, duopoly competition