利用數位智權管理對資訊商品進行區隔化之分析研究

Abstract

數位智慧財產權管理（Digital Rights Management, DRM）是一種用來控制資訊商產品（像是軟體、音樂或是其他數位內容）所能夠被自由運用的程度的技術。例如，在Apple’s iTune Store所購買的音樂只能在他們授權的裝置數量以內同時播放。這項技術所賦予資訊商品的屬性，稱之為彈性（flexibility）。而這項新的屬性可以對使用者所認定的價值造成差異。可以想見的是，相同的產品之下，具有越高的彈性，可以讓使用者願意付出更高的價格購買，因此我們提出了利用彈性來對市場進行區隔化的定價策略。本篇論文中，我們修改了原本在獨占的市場底下採用統一定價方式的模型（Uniform Pricing Model），提出了一個區隔化模型（Two-market-segmentation Based Model）；由數學推導證明了進行區隔化之後的區隔化模型在特定範圍的流通率（permeability）之下，確實可以為廠商帶來更多的利潤。

The Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology used to restrict the access to the software, music, or other digital content, (For example, the music purchased from Apple’s iTunes Store, have some DRM schemes built in to limit the number of devices they may be played on. ) brings the information goods with an extra attribute which could make the difference to consumers. Such an attribute was called “flexibility”. Intuitively, we may think the higher flexibility, the higher price that a consumer prefers to pay. We suggest that the firm could use flexibility to differentiate for more profit. In this paper, we adapted the original model with a price to a corresponding flexibility for the differentiation pricing version, a two-market-segmentation based model. There are two pairs of pricing strategies in the new model, and then the result is that the firm can make more profit from differentiating in a monopoly market and a specific range of permeability.