Information Goods vs. Industrial Goods: Cost Structure and Competition

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jones, Roy; Mendelson, Haim
• 署名单位: University of Rochester; Stanford University
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.1100.1262
• 发表日期: 2011
• 页码: 164-176
• 关键词: information goods; convex development cost; product and price competition

摘要

We study markets for information goods and find that they differ significantly from markets for traditional industrial goods. Markets for information goods in which products are vertically differentiated lack the segmentation inherent in markets for industrial goods. As a result, a monopoly will offer only a single product. Competition leads to highly concentrated information-good markets, with the leading firm behaving almost like a monopoly even with free entry and without network effects. We study how the structure of the firms' cost functions drives our results.