數位服務營利與契約模型

Abstract

數位服務乃由提供人們存取網際網路的連線服務和提供消費者使用的內容服務如音樂、線上遊戲與影音所組成。今日，大部份的數位服務是經由多個廠商各司其職所組合而成的。舉例來說，創作內容和提供內容存取的廠商可以是不同間公司。因此我們須要一個完備的契約模型來解決這些公司之間可能發生的利益衝突。很明顯地，數位服務改變我們今日生活，並且衍生出許多挑戰性的研究議題。事實上，我們發現很多相關研究對於如何讓數位服務提供者獲取更高報酬的方法付之如闕。因此，本研究企圖探索數位服務的定價策略與經營手法。為了能增加數位服務提供者所能賺取的收益與報酬，我們分別從市場區隔(Market Segmentation)與產能規劃(Capacity Planning)著手，研究數位服務如何定價以及建立契約模型。 在本研究中，我們藉由三個最具代表性的數位服務來討論這些問題。這三個數位服務分別是:無線網路存取服務，線上遊戲服務，與數位音樂服務。在無線網路存取服務中，我們發現頻寬分享對WiMAX廠商有利，但對Wi-Fi廠商而言則很難有實質的好處。在具備網路效應的線上遊戲服務中，如果廠商有意將他們的產品委託代理商經營時，我們建議廠商可以採用收益分享契約機制以獲取較高的報酬。在數位音樂服務中，我們發現單一定價方式可能會造成唱片公司在雙通路的收益上低於單純的光碟銷售通路。

In this study, we consider digital services which are composed of access services, offering users the ability to connect to Internet, and content services, offering and serving digital contents, such as music, online games, and videos which users experience. Today, digital services in most cases are provided by two or more companies which have difference tasks. For example, the firm creating contents and the firm serving contents can be two different companies. Thus, we need a well-designed contract to solve the conflict of profit distribution among them. Obviously, digital services change the way we live and generate many challenging research issues. In fact, we find that many related studies rarely tell us in what manner digital service providers could earn more. Thus, in this research we aim to explore the way of monetizing digital services and operation strategies. In order to increase digital service providers’ revenues and payoffs, we study how to price digital services and how to build contract models through the perspective of market segmentation and capacity planning. Here, we discuss these questions by three representative digital services. They are wireless access services, online game services, and digital music services. In wireless access services, we study the bandwidth sharing between WiFi and WiMAX services. We find that bandwidth sharing would benefit a WiMAX service provider, yet a WiFi service provider has no significant saving under a wholesale price contract. In online game services exhibiting network effects, in order to acquire higher profit, we suggest that an online game developer adopt revenue sharing contract when contracting with a commercial agent. In digital music services, we identify that uniform price can lead to the result that a dual channel is worse than a pure CD channel when uniform price is too low.