Pricing Software Upgrades: The Role of Product Improvement and User Costs
Pricing Software Upgrades: The Role of Product Improvement and User Costs
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DOI：
10.3401/poms.1080.01030
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发表时间：
2009-09-01
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
Carr, Scott
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Bala, Ram;Carr, Scott
计算机软件业是新产品快速推出的一个极端例子。然而，许多消费者足够成熟，能够预测到未来升级的可用性。这就造成了消费者要么推迟购买，要么提前购买而不升级的可能性。作为回应，许多软件生产商为老客户提供特殊的升级定价，以减轻战略消费者行为的影响。我们通过描述产品改进幅度与均衡定价结构之间的关系来分析升级定价的最优性，特别是在用户升级成本的背景下。这种升级成本（如升级配套硬件或驱动程序的成本）是用户在购买新版本时产生的，但不包含在软件的升级价格中。我们的方法是建立一个博弈论模型，消费者可以提前预测价格和产品质量，而公司可以提供特殊的升级定价。我们根据基本参数将升级分为小升级、中等升级和大升级。我们发现，在用户成本足够大的情况下，升级定价是小型和大型升级的有效工具，而不是中等升级。因此，在产品改进的中等范围内，升级定价对公司来说是次优的。用户升级成本对定价决策有直接和间接的影响。间接效应的产生是因为升级成本是决定所有老消费者是否会升级到新产品的关键因素，这进一步改变了产品改进阈值，使特殊升级定价成为最优。最后，我们还分析了升级定价对市场总覆盖率的影响。
The computer software industry is an extreme example of rapid new product introduction. However, many consumers are sophisticated enough to anticipate the availability of upgrades in the future. This creates the possibility that consumers might either postpone purchase or buy early on and never upgrade. In response, many software producers offer special upgrade pricing to old customers in order to mitigate the effects of strategic consumer behavior. We analyze the optimality of upgrade pricing by characterizing the relationship between magnitude of product improvement and the equilibrium pricing structure, particularly in the context of user upgrade costs. This upgrade cost (such as the cost of upgrading complementary hardware or drivers) is incurred by the user when she buys the new version but is not captured by the upgrade price for the software. Our approach is to formulate a game theoretic model where consumers can look ahead and anticipate prices and product qualities while the firm can offer special upgrade pricing. We classify upgrades as minor, moderate or large based on the primitive parameters. We find that at sufficiently large user costs, upgrade pricing is an effective tool for minor and large upgrades but not moderate upgrades. Thus, upgrade pricing is suboptimal for the firm for a middle range of product improvement. User upgrade costs have both direct and indirect effects on the pricing decision. The indirect effect arises because the upgrade cost is a critical factor in determining whether all old consumers would upgrade to a new product or not, and this further alters the product improvement threshold at which special upgrade pricing becomes optimal. Finally, we also analyze the impact of upgrade pricing on the total coverage of the market.