The price strategy of information asymmetry platform with partly multi-homing

In real life, it is a rare occurrence that all customers are multi-homing or single-homing to platforms. The more prevalent case is that a part of the customers are multi-homing to platforms, while others are single-homing. Based on the Hotelling model, a two-sided platform competition model with asymmetric information was built. A research of the platform price strategies with different market structures under customer partly multi-homing was conducted. The research show: ①platforms charge a low price to customers who join in first and the price is closely related to the customers’ affiliated situation; ②platforms will set a low price for those who arrive later if they are multi-homing to platforms and it is more beneficial for those who join in first if they single-home when the network effect is high enough；③it is important for the development of the platform to set appropriate price strategies for guiding customers’ affiliation under various market structures.