Pricing strategy of cloud manufacturing platform based on two-sided market theory

Based on the theory of two-sided market, the optimal pricing strategy of monopoly cloud manufacturing platform under the mode of charging membership fees and transaction fees was analyzed, and the numerical simulation was used to analyze the difference of platform optimal profit under two charging modes. The results showed that the unilateral optimal pricing was negative correlated with payer's self-network externality coefficient and free party's cross-network externality coefficient and was positive correlated with the number of free-party users, and bilateral optimal pricing was affected by the relative size of each parameter. The object of unilateral pricing was the party with a relatively large number of users. When the number of users on both sides was relatively balanced, bilateral optimal pricing was equal to unilateral optimal pricing, and the optimal profit of platform was higher than unilateral pricing. The optimal pricing strategy was determined by transactions number within the platform. When the transactions number was large, the bilateral transaction fee mode was better. Otherwise, the bilateral membership fee was better. The threshold for the number of transactions depended on the network effect and number of users in the platform. © 2020, Editorial Department of CIMS. All right reserved.