Versioning: Go Vertical in a Horizontal Market?

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dey, Debabrata; Lahiri, Atanu
• 署名单位: University of Washington; University of Washington Seattle; University of Texas System; University of Texas Dallas
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0742-1222
• DOI: 10.1080/07421222.2016.1205923
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 546-572
• 关键词: information goods; Experience goods; network externalities; product; differentiation; uncertainty; COMPETITION; ECONOMICS; monopoly; strategy

摘要

The issue of versioning of information goods has resurfaced, in part as a result of the recent popularity of downloadable contents (DLC) among video game manufacturers. The central idea behind the DLC strategy, zero-day DLCs in particular, is that consumers who find the base version of a game to be sufficiently close to their tastes would want more of its capabilities and would pay a premium to upgrade by purchasing a DLC. To better understand the implications of such a product-line strategy, in this work, we combine the literature on versioning with that on consumer learning. In doing so, we uncover an interesting economic phenomenon that, for an experience good, a manufacturer's desire to vertically differentiate could actually stem from its inability to otherwise elicit unobserved heterogeneity in consumers' perceived fit. In other words, we generalize versioning to accommodate both vertical and horizontal heterogeneity.