• Asia Marketing Journal
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.35-69
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• 2014

The impact of competition on pricing has been studied in the context of counterfactual merger analyses where expected optimal prices in a hypothetical monopoly are compared with observed prices in an oligopolistic market. Such analyses would typically assume static decision making by consumers and firms and thus have been applied mostly to data obtained from consumer packed goods such as cereal and soft drinks. However such static modeling approach is not suitable when decision makers are forward looking. When it comes to the markets for durable products with indirect network effects, consumer purchase decisions and firm pricing decisions are inherently dynamic as they take into account future states when making purchase and pricing decisions. Researchers need to take into account the dynamic aspects of decision making both in the consumer side and in the supplier side for such markets. Firms in a two-sided market typically subsidize one side of the market to exploit the indirect network effect. Such pricing behaviors would be more prevalent in competitive markets where firms would try to win over the battle for standard. While such qualitative expectation on the relationship between pricing behaviors and competitive structures could be easily formed, little empirical studies have measured the extent to which the distinct pricing structure in two-sided markets depends on the competitive structure of the market. This paper develops an empirical model to measure the impact of competition on optimal pricing of durable products under indirect network effects. In order to measure the impact of exogenously determined competition among firms on pricing, we compare the equilibrium prices in the observed oligopoly market to those in a hypothetical monopoly market. In computing the equilibrium prices, we account for the forward looking behaviors of consumers and supplier. We first estimate a demand function that accounts for consumers' forward-looking behaviors and indirect network effects. And then, for the supply side, the pricing equation is obtained as an outcome of the Markov Perfect Nash Equilibrium in pricing. In doing so, we utilize numerical dynamic programming techniques. We apply our model to a data set obtained from the U.S. video game console market. The video game console market is considered a prototypical case of two-sided markets in which the platform typically subsidizes one side of market to expand the installed base anticipating larger revenues in the other side of market resulting from the expanded installed base. The data consist of monthly observations of price, hardware unit sales and the number of compatible software titles for Sony PlayStation and Nintendo 64 from September 1996 to August 2002. Sony PlayStation was released to the market a year before Nintendo 64 was launched. We compute the expected equilibrium price path for Nintendo 64 and Playstation for both oligopoly and for monopoly. Our analysis reveals that the price level differs significantly between two competition structures. The merged monopoly is expected to set prices higher by 14.8% for Sony PlayStation and 21.8% for Nintendo 64 on average than the independent firms in an oligopoly would do. And such removal of competition would result in a reduction in consumer value by 43.1%. Higher prices are expected for the hypothetical monopoly because the merged firm does not need to engage in the battle for industry standard. This result is attributed to the distinct property of a two-sided market that competing firms tend to set low prices particularly at the initial period to attract consumers at the introductory stage and to reinforce their own networks and eventually finally to dominate the market.

• Korean Management Science Review
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• v.21 no.3
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• pp.85-99
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• 2004

The retention of customer is an increasingly pressing issue in today's competitive environment. The proposes of this paper is a personalized defection detection and the procedure of prevention based on economic analysis of customer defection possibility, and behaviour state transition cost. This procedure is based on the observation that potential defectors have a tendency to take a couple of months or weeks to gradually change their behaviour before their eventual withdrawal. In this procedure, the SOM(Self-Organizing Map) is used to determine the possible states of customer behaviour from past behaviour data, and to prevent the defection of potential defectors, the proposed procedure recommends the desirable behaviour state for the next period based on the analysis of transition cost. and likelihood of defection. The case study has been conducted for a Korean on-line game provider to evaluate of this procedure.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.56 no.10
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• pp.1738-1743
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• 2007

This paper addresses the bidding strategies of a pumped-storage hydro plant in an electricity market. Competitive bidding of pumping and generating of a pumped-storage plant is formulated in a game theoretic problem in accordance with the three different ownership of scheduling; Market Operator(MO), generating company(Genco), and combined type of MO and Genco. Optimal conditions for Nash Equilibrium are derived in the form of market prices during the scheduling periods. Simulation results show the different ownership models produce different schedules of pumping and generating, which correspond to the objective of the scheduling owner of a pumped-storage hydro plant.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.49 no.6
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• pp.266-271
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• 2000

The electric power industries are moving from the conventional monopolistic or vertically integrated environments to deregulated and competitive environments, where each participant is concerned with profit maximization rather than system-wide costs minimization. Consequently, the conventional least-cost approaches for the generation resource schedule can not exactly handle real-world situations. This paper presents a game theory application for analyzing power transactions and market design in a deregulated energy marketplace, where the market participants determine the net profits through the optimal bidding strategies. The demand elasticity of the energy price is considered for the realistic modeling of the deregulated marketplace.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.52 no.10
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• pp.616-623
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• 2003

Competition among electric generation companies is a major goal of restructuring in the electricity industry, The trading system in an electricity market has been one of the most important issues in deregulated electricity market. This paper deals with comparisons of the major two types of the trading system: compulsory pool market and bilateral contract market. The two trading systems are compared quantitatively from the viewpoint of consumer's surplus and social welfare, This paper, also, proposes a unified model of Cournot and Bertrand for analyzing the mixed trading system of pool market and bilateral contract market. Nash equilibrium of the unified model is derived by criteria for participating in bilateral contract market. Numerical results from a sample case show that a mixed trading system of pool market and price-competitive bilateral market is beneficial to consumer from the view points of consumer's surplus.

• The Transactions of The Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers
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• v.59 no.7
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• pp.1226-1231
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• 2010

This paper looks at the influence of Financial Transmission Rights (FTRs) on the market value(Social Welfare; SW) in the competitive electricity market. The transmission line constraints make it difficult to compute the Nash Equilibrium (NE) due to causing a mixed strategy NE instead of a pure strategy NE. Computing a mixed strategy is more complicated in a multi-player game. The aim of this paper are to compute a mixed strategy NE and analyze SW in power transaction with FTRs. This paper introduces a formula and a technique for solving NE of multi-player game with FTRs. In addition, it analyzes the influence of holding of FTRs by generation company on SW and it proposes the SW at NE is influenced by Power Transfer Distribution Factor (PTDF) where holder of FTRs are located. The assertion is verified by calculating the mixed strategy utilizing the Cournot model widely used for studies on FTRs.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.55 no.11
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• pp.492-497
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• 2006

Nash Equilibrium (NE) is essential to investigate a participant's bidding strategy in a competitive electricity market. The transmission line constraints make it difficult to compute the NE due to causing a mixed strategy NE instead of a pure strategy NE. Computing a mixed strategy is more complicated in a multi-player game. The competition among multi-participants is modeled by a two-level hierarchical optimization problem. A mathematical programming approach is widely used in finding this equilibrium. However, there are difficulties to solving a mixed strategy NE. This paper presents two propositions to add heuristics to the mathematical programming method. The propositions are based on empirical studies on mixed strategies in numerous sample systems. Based on the propositions a new formulation is provided with a set of linear and nonlinear equations, and an algorithm is suggested for using the prepositions and the newly-formulated equations.

• Asian Journal of Innovation and Policy
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.274-293
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• 2021

Utilizing outside knowledge for innovation is an important task for companies in the competitive economy. Due to the rapid advance in the internet communication technology, the number and quality of innovation sourcing methods are increasing. We select co-creation, personalization and in-house R&D as the representative forms of innovation sourcing and suggest a game theory model that enables the comparative analysis between them. The decision and surplus outcome of the innovation mechanisms are compared under various settings of the input parameters of the model. The stakeholders voluntarily participate into all mechanisms when the product price is moderately high and the participation cost is low, while co-creation is the only feasible one when the product quality is niche. When the participation cost is relatively high, personalization outperforms co-creation.

• Bulletin of the Korean Mathematical Society
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• v.54 no.1
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• pp.225-242
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• 2017

A family of $Ap{\acute{e}}ry$-like series involving reciprocals of central binomial coefficients is studied and it is shown that they represent transcendental numbers. The structure of such series is further examined in terms of finite combinations of logarithms and arctangents with arguments and coefficients belonging to a suitable algebraic extension of rationals. Monotonicity of certain quotients of weighted binomial sums which arise in the study of competitive cheap talk models is established with the help of a continuous extension of the discrete model at hand. The monotonic behavior of such quotients turns out to have important applications in game theory.

• The Transactions of the Korean Institute of Electrical Engineers A
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• v.55 no.9
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• pp.392-398
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• 2006

Maintenance scheduling of generating units (MSU) has strategic dimension in an oligopolistic market. Strategic MSU of gencos can affect a market power through capacity withdrawal which is related to bidding strategy in an generation wholesale market. This paper presents a combined framework that models the interrelation between competitive bidding and strategic MSU. The combined game model is represented as some sub-optimization problems of a market operator (MO) and gencos, that should be solved through bi-level optimization scheme. The gradient method with dual variables is also adopted to calculate a Nash Equilibrium (NE) by an iterative update technique in this paper. Illustrative numerical example shows that NE of a supply function equilibrium is obtained properly by using proposed solution technique. The MSU made by MO is compared with that by each genco and that under perfect competition market.