Dan Li
School of Economics and Management
Beijing Jiaotong University
Beijing,China
Xianliang Shi
School of Economics and Management
Beijing Jiaotong University
Beijing,China
xlshi@bjtu.edu.cn
Abstract—With the advancement of national policies, crowdsourcing logistics has been developing rapidly, there emerges many crowdsourcing logistics platforms, such as the Everyone Express, Jingdong Crowdsourcing, etc. The profit model and profitability of the platform is the focus of the operators and researchers. In this paper, based on the two-sided market theory, we consider that in the competitive market, both the distributor and the client can choose a platform to trade, and discuss the platform profit space of different pricing methods. The results show that the direct network externalities, indirect network externality, the service differentiation level of platform, matching ratio and other factors will affect the optimal pricing of platform to users, and when the platform is completely matched, the pricing for the transaction fee will be lower than the registration fee, but the profit of the platform is the same.
Key words—crowdsourcing logistics platform, competitive market, pricing strategy
I. Introduction
Since the State Council executive meeting proposed to promote the development of sharing economy, to combine deepening the reform of state-owned enterprises and promoting the double creation, to encourage the use of crowdsourcing new model to promote the transformation of production mode, Crowdsourcing logistics distribution terminal will usher in a new era. The electricity business companies, courier companies and other different business entities better organize and optimize the idle social human by establishing crowdsourcing logistics platform, to complete the last few kilometers distribution. The establishment of the platform, how to attract users, how to make the platform profit, which is the majority issue of business enterprises need to explore, and the people of studying this issue is relatively small. Based on two-sided market theory, considering the competition in the market, and distributors and clients are single home, the profit of platform under the different pricing methods based on direct network externalities, platform matching rate, different service levels and other factors.