关键词: 网约车平台, 交叉网络外部性, 双边市场, 定价策略

Abstract: With the development of mobile Internet, a variety of new travel modes with characteristics of two-sided market are emerging and new transportation management problems also arise. Based on the theory of two-sided market and considering the inter-group network externality, the pricing problem of ride-hailing platform is studied from two aspects, i.e. both travelers and drivers are single-homing and travelers multi-homing while drivers single-homing. Moreover, the factors of time sensitive parameter and driver’s commission rate are introduced to characterize the feature of ride-hailing industry. Finally, the pricing structure, the scale of consumer and profit of platforms are obtained. The results indicate that the relationship between price, profit and inter-group network externality, time sensitive factor depends on the user structure. Further, the price and profit are negatively related to service differentiation, which also leads to lower user scale on the situation of travelers multi-homing. Finally, the increase of driver’s commission rate leads to a lower price charged to travelers, higher price charged to drivers and lower profit when both sides are single-homing. However, when travelers are multi-homing, the relationship between price charged to drivers and driver’s commission rate also depends on the relative strength of inter-group network externality from both sides.

Key words: ride-hailing platform, inter-group network externality, two-sided market, pricing strategy