第三方电子交易平台运营初期的定价策略——基于在线个人借贷市场的实证研究

实践表明，作为典型的“双边市场”，第三方电子交易平台在运营初期的定价策略对平台的生存与发展起着非常重要的作用。为了弥补当前实证研究的不足，文章以Armstrong的垄断模型为基础，采用加权两阶段最小二乘联立方程模型分析了Prosper.com在线个人借贷平台在2009年7月13日至2011年3月7日期间用户网络外部性特征和平台定价策略对借贷双方效用及平台收入的影响。结果显示：平台运营初期，用户之间存在显著正的交叉网络外部性和自网络外部性；用户价格弹性会随平台定价策略和平台的发展而变化；平台收入与用户价格弹性之间呈现负的规律性变化关系。研究结果在一定程度上反应了第三方电子交易平台运营初期特征的同时也提出了当前理论研究的不足，兼具实践和理论价值。

Third-party Electronic Market’s Pricing Strategies in the Early Stage——An Empirical Study of Online Peer-to-Peer Lending Marketplace

According to the development of internet economy, the third-party electronic platform's pricing strategy plays a very important role in the early stage of the platform's development. However, there is little related empirical research based on the theory of two-sided market because of the lack of data. Based on the monopoly model built by Armstrong, the weighted two-stage least square method is used to empirically investigate how the users' inter-and intra-group network externalities and pricing strategies influence on the platform's profit from July 13^th 2009 to March 7^th 2011 on Prosper.com. The main results show that lenders and borrowers have both positive inter and intra-group network externalities.Further, user's price elasticity would be influenced by the pricing strategies and platform's development.And platform's profit has a negative relationship with user's price elasticity. The results show some characteristics of the third-party electronic market, as well as some shortages of current research about two-sided market.