• Asia Marketing Journal
• /
• 제16권1호
• /
• pp.35-69
• /
• 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.

• 지능정보연구
• /
• 제29권2호
• /
• pp.101-114
• /
• 2023

유사시 종심 깊숙한 곳에서 적을 타격하는 임무를 수행하는 항공기의 경우 격추될 위험에 항시 노출되어 있다. 현대전의 핵심 전투력으로써 최첨단의 무기체계를 운용하는 공중근무 요원은 양성하는데 많은 시간과 노력, 국가 예산이 소요되며 그들이 가진 작전 능력과 군사기밀이 매우 중요하기에 공중근무 요원의 생환은 매우 중요한 문제이다. 따라서, 본 연구에서는 적지에서 비상탈출한 조난자가 장애물을 피해 목표지점까지 도피·탈출을 시행할 경로를 예측하는 경로 문제를 연구하였으며 이를 통해 비상탈출한 조난자의 무사 생환 가능성을 높이고자 하였다. 본 연구 주제와 관련된 기존 연구들은 경로 문제를 네트워크 기반 문제로 접근하여 TSP, VRP, Dijkstra 알고리즘 등으로 문제를 변형하여 최적화 기법으로 접근한 연구가 있었다. 본 연구에서는 동적 환경을 모델링 하기에 적합한 MDP(마코프 의사결정과정)를 적용하여 연구하였다. 또한 GIS를 이용하여 지형정보 데이터를 추출하여 활용함으로써 모형의 객관성을 높였으며, MDP의 보상구조를 설계하는 과정에서 기존 연구 대비 모형이 좀 더 현실성을 가질 수 있도록 보다 상세히 지형정보를 반영하였다. 본 연구에서는 조난자가 지형적 이점을 최대한 이용함과 동시에 최단거리로 이동할 수 있는 경로를 도출하기 위하여 가치 반복법 알고리즘, 결정론적 방법론을 사용하였으며 실제 지형정보와 조난자가 도피·탈출 과정에서 만날 수 있는 장애요소들을 추가하여 모형의 현실성을 더하고자 하였다. 이를 통해 조난자가 조난 상황에서 어떠한 경로를 통해 도피·탈출을 수행할지 예측해 볼 수 있었다. 본 연구에서 제시한 모형은 보상구조의 재설계를 통해 여러 가지 다양한 작전 상황에 응용이 가능하며 실제 상황에서 조난자의 도피·탈출 경로를 예측하고 전투 탐색구조 작전을 진행시키는 데 있어 다양한 요소가 반영된 과학적인 기법에 근거한 의사결정 지원이 가능할 것이다.