【 The Digital Star Seminar Series No.30 】Competition in Freemium Service Provision

Date: 25 November 2022 (Fri) 
Time: 9:00am - 10:30am (Hong Kong Time, UTC+8)
Platform: Tencent Meeting (ID 153-207-983)

Host: Prof. Miaojun Wang (School of Economics, Zhejiang University)

Presenter: Dr. Yejia Xu (Postdoctoral Fellow of Harvard Business School)

Abstract：

"Freemium" refers to the business model where a firm provides both an ad-sponsored free service and a paid premium service. We propose a game-theoretic framework to study firms' decisions to use the freemium business model and how competition affects such decisions. We find that, with more firms on the market, the symmetric freemium equilibrium is more likely to emerge, but the equilibrium price for the premium service can either increase or decrease, depending on the advertising fee, the advertising intensity, and the expected valuation of services.

Intro to Dr. Yejia Xu:

Yejia Xu is a postdoctoral fellow of Harvard Business School and a doctor of economics of the University of Southern California. His main research fields are industrial organization theory and anti-monopoly economics. He published papers in Management Science.

Organization：

- The Chinese University of Hong Kong-Zhejiang University Joint Research Center for Digital Economy

- China Digital Economy Research Center of School of Economics, Zhejiang University

- Zhejiang University Digital Economy Innovation Research Team

Intro to The Digital Star Seminar Series：

The Digital Star Seminar Series is co-hosted by the China Digital Economy Research Center of School of Economics, Zhejiang University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong-Zhejiang University Joint Research Center for Digital Economy. This series of seminars will study the development of the digital economy and China's economic transformation based on the practice of China's digital transformation. We will invite domestic and overseas scholars to share and discuss the latest research on the digital economy and the Chinese economy. We hope that this academic platform can become a paradise for the study of the digital economy. More importantly, it can generate insights that significantly impact the digital economy and Chinese economy, which will help promote digital transformation and high-quality economic development in Chinese society.