Pricing Strategy of Online Knowledge Market: The Analysis of Google Answers

Abstract

This article addresses the different levels of pricing strategies for an online knowledge market. Based on the best practice from Google Answers, an online knowledge market is modeled as a marketplace where consumers ask and researchers answer questions to make knowledge transactions. Consumers optimally price their questions to obtain answers, and a firm maintains the online knowledge market by determining the optimal price allocation to researchers. Our study identifies two types of consumers, spin-off and mainstream, based on whether additional utilities will be derived from the market. In addition, we investigate how the firm can use minimal and maximal posting prices to regulate the knowledge market.