Can price discrimination improve the performance of online retail platforms?

Abstract

Online retail platforms are the core of online retail activities, but due to increased competition among the platforms, traditional sources of revenue such as the membership and transaction fees alone cannot guarantee platform profitability. Thus, platform enterprises are looking for other sources of revenue. In this article, we focus on the role of value-added services fees charged by platforms. Specifically, we show that price discrimination exercised by platform enterprises in value-added services fees can increase the user access scale, platform profit as well as the social welfare.