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Congestion and Network Externalities in the Short Run Pricing of Information System Services

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  • J. Christopher Westland

    (School of Business Administration, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089-1421)

Abstract

Transfer pricing provides management with an efficient tool for coordinating the use of information system services. In practice these services, if they are charged out to end users, are priced via an allocation of historical costs based on individual usage, or are assigned a price based on the fair market value of outside alternatives. Both approaches encourage suboptimal usage of information systems resources: they ignore three constituents of optimal transfer prices: (1) the reaction of other users to any change in a given user's consumption of service; (2) the technical response to additional use of an information system service, in the form of congestion and network externalities; and (3) end-user preferences for the information system service. Together, these influences on demand contribute to an externality. Two types of externalities are significant in information systems---congestion externalities decrease, and network externalities increase the utility of services. This research provides a complete model for computing optimal transfer price which corrects several existing problems in information system service valuation. When full absorption cost allocations contain significant fixed, precommitted or sunk cost components, it is not possible to balance the budget. Direct costing improves on full absorption costing, but misspecifies costs when demand is nonlinear. To balance the budget with a minimum of disutility to end users management must resort to second-best pricing. Inefficiency arises from two sources when externalities are ignored in transfer pricing. End users cannot plan service usage, and thus encounter unanticipated congestion which lowers morale and efficiency, and increases costly expediting. Where congestion effects are highly nonlinear, congestion may effectively shut down the system. On the other hand, incorrect transfer prices can motivate usage too low to take advantage of network benefits. End users may confuse externality effects and intrinsic value of an information system service. In these cases, the price and performance of outside alternatives exert a complex and subtle influence on use and pricing of services. Where there exist identical outside and inside processing alternatives, and transfer pricing does not reflect this, there is a significant tendency to overprice and underutilize internal services. In this case there may be a tendency to outsource when processing should be kept in-house. Future markets for information systems will favor technologies which exhibit strong network externalities, and pricing of these technologies will become increasingly complex because of the interrelationship of hardware, software and data originated externalities. The models provided in this research will allow management to take advantage of these opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • J. Christopher Westland, 1992. "Congestion and Network Externalities in the Short Run Pricing of Information System Services," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 38(7), pages 992-1009, July.
  • Handle: RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:38:y:1992:i:7:p:992-1009
    DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.38.7.992
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    Cited by:

    1. Hasan Cavusoglu & Huseyin Cavusoglu & Xianjun Geng, 2020. "Bloatware and Jailbreaking: Strategic Impacts of Consumer-Initiated Modification of Technology Products," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(1), pages 240-257, March.
    2. Yasin Ceran & Milind Dawande & Dengpan Liu & Vijay Mookerjee, 2014. "Optimal Software Reuse in Incremental Software Development: A Transfer Pricing Approach," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 60(3), pages 541-559, March.
    3. Arun Sundararajan, 2004. "Nonlinear Pricing of Information Goods," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(12), pages 1660-1673, December.
    4. Baric{s} Ata & Shiri Shneorson, 2006. "Dynamic Control of an M/M/1 Service System with Adjustable Arrival and Service Rates," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 52(11), pages 1778-1791, November.
    5. Li, Yung-Ming & Lee, Yi-Lin, 2010. "Pricing peer-produced services: Quality, capacity, and competition issues," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 207(3), pages 1658-1668, December.
    6. Sanjay Jain & P. K. Kannan, 2002. "Pricing of Information Products on Online Servers: Issues, Models, and Analysis," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 48(9), pages 1123-1142, September.
    7. Kartik Hosanagar & John Chuang & Ramayya Krishnan & Michael D. Smith, 2008. "Service Adoption and Pricing of Content Delivery Network (CDN) Services," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 54(9), pages 1579-1593, September.
    8. Roy Radner & Ami Radunskaya & Arun Sundararajan, 2010. "Dynamic Pricing of Network Goods with Boundedly Rational Consumers," Working Papers 10-13, New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, Department of Economics.
    9. Prabhudev Konana & Alok Gupta & Andrew B. Whinston, 2000. "Integrating User Preferences and Real-Time Workload in Information Services," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 11(2), pages 177-196, June.
    10. Meng, Dawen & Tian, Guoqiang, 2008. "Nonlinear Pricing with Network Externalities and Countervailing Incentives," MPRA Paper 41212, University Library of Munich, Germany, revised Aug 2008.
    11. L. Colombo & P. Labrecciosa & L. Lambertini, 2005. "A Chicken Game of Intraindustry Trade," Working Papers 548, Dipartimento Scienze Economiche, Universita' di Bologna.
    12. Philipp Afèche & Haim Mendelson, 2004. "Pricing and Priority Auctions in Queueing Systems with a Generalized Delay Cost Structure," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(7), pages 869-882, July.
    13. Tavasoli, Ali & Fazli, Mehrdad & Ardjmand, Ehsan & Young, William A. & Shakeri, Heman, 2023. "Competitive pricing under local network effects," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 311(2), pages 545-566.
    14. John W. Boudreau, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: Organizational Behavior, Strategy, Performance, and Design in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(11), pages 1463-1476, November.
    15. Bhatt, Ganesh D. & Stump, Rodney L., 2001. "An empirically derived model of the role of IS networks in business process improvement initiatives," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 29-48, February.
    16. Anja Lambrecht & Katja Seim & Naufel Vilcassim & Amar Cheema & Yuxin Chen & Gregory Crawford & Kartik Hosanagar & Raghuram Iyengar & Oded Koenigsberg & Robin Lee & Eugenio Miravete & Ozge Sahin, 2012. "Price discrimination in service industries," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 23(2), pages 423-438, June.
    17. Erica L. Plambeck & Qiong Wang, 2013. "Implications of Hyperbolic Discounting for Optimal Pricing and Scheduling of Unpleasant Services That Generate Future Benefits," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(8), pages 1927-1946, August.
    18. Dan Li & Manuel Portugal Ferreira, 2008. "Internal and External Factors on Firms’ Transfer Pricing Decisions: Insights from Organization Studies," Notas Económicas, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra, issue 27, pages 23-38, June.
    19. Rajiv D. Banker & Robert J. Kauffman, 2004. "50th Anniversary Article: The Evolution of Research on Information Systems: A Fiftieth-Year Survey of the Literature in Management Science," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 281-298, March.
    20. Becker, Jan U. & Clement, Michel & Nöth, Markus, 2016. "Start-ups, incumbents, and the effects of takeover competition," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(12), pages 5925-5933.
    21. Y Perlman & M Kaspi, 2007. "Centralized decision of internal transfer-prices with congestion externalities for two modes of repair with limited repair capacity," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 58(9), pages 1178-1184, September.
    22. Ke-Wei Huang & Arun Sundararajan, 2006. "Pricing Digital Goods: Discontinuous Costs and Shared Infrastructure," Working Papers 06-11, NET Institute, revised Sep 2006.
    23. Wang, E. T. G., 2000. "Information and incentives in computing services supply: The effect of limited system choices," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 125(3), pages 503-518, September.
    24. Bernd W. Wirtz & Torsten Olderog & Joachim Schwarz, 2003. "Strategische Erfolgsfaktoren in der Internetökonomie," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 55(1), pages 60-77, February.

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