IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-05513277.html

Sequential pricing on multisided platforms

Author

Listed:
  • Philippe Bontems

    (TSE-R - Toulouse School of Economics - UT Capitole - Université Toulouse Capitole - Comue de Toulouse - Communauté d'universités et établissements de Toulouse - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - INRAE - Institut National de Recherche pour l’Agriculture, l’Alimentation et l’Environnement)

  • Stephen F Hamilton

    (United States of America)

  • Jason Lepore

    (United States of America)

Abstract

Multisided platforms have emerged as an increasingly important market structure with the rise of the digital economy. In this paper, we consider sequential price setting behavior by platforms and demonstrate sequential pricing outcomes Pareto dominate simultaneous pricing outcomes in terms of firm and industry profits. We compare policy implications and find prices are more balanced across the platform and average prices are higher under sequential pricing than under simultaneous pricing. We also demonstrate that pricing power can be considered independently on each side of the market under multihoming behavior.

Suggested Citation

  • Philippe Bontems & Stephen F Hamilton & Jason Lepore, 2025. "Sequential pricing on multisided platforms," Post-Print hal-05513277, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05513277
    DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112543
    Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05513277v1
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://hal.inrae.fr/hal-05513277v1/document
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112543?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Thomas D. Jeitschko & Mark J. Tremblay, 2020. "Platform Competition With Endogenous Homing," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 61(3), pages 1281-1305, August.
    2. Jean-Charles Rochet & Jean Tirole, 2003. "Platform Competition in Two-Sided Markets," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 1(4), pages 990-1029, June.
    3. Andrei Hagiu, 2006. "Pricing and Commitment by Two-Sided Platforms," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 720-737, Autumn.
    4. Belleflamme, Paul & Peitz, Martin, 2019. "Platform competition: Who benefits from multihoming?," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 1-26.
    5. Andrei Hagiu, 2006. "Pricing and commitment by two‐sided platforms," RAND Journal of Economics, RAND Corporation, vol. 37(3), pages 720-737, September.
    6. Yannis Bakos & Hanna Halaburda, 2020. "Platform Competition with Multihoming on Both Sides: Subsidize or Not?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 66(12), pages 5599-5607, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bontems, Philippe & Hamilton, Stephen F. & Lepore, Jason, 2025. "Sequential pricing on multisided platforms," TSE Working Papers 25-1658, Toulouse School of Economics (TSE).
    2. Bontems, Philippe & Hamilton, Stephen F. & Lepore, Jason, 2025. "Sequential pricing on multisided platforms," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 255(C).
    3. Bruno Jullien & Alessandro Pavan & Marc Rysman, 2021. "Two-sided markets, pricing, and network effects," Post-Print hal-03828345, HAL.
    4. Tremblay, Mark J. & Adachi, Takanori & Sato, Susumu, 2023. "Cournot platform competition with mixed-homing," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 91(C).
    5. Belleflamme, Paul & Peitz, Martin & Toulemonde, Eric, 2022. "The tension between market shares and profit under platform competition," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 81(C).
    6. Jan Frederic Nerbel & Markus Kreutzer, 2023. "Digital platform ecosystems in flux: From proprietary digital platforms to wide-spanning ecosystems," Electronic Markets, Springer;IIM University of St. Gallen, vol. 33(1), pages 1-20, December.
    7. Li, Xiang & Wang, Meiqi, 2025. "Homing strategies for asymmetric sellers on differentiated platforms," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    8. Huixin Liu & Feng Du, 2023. "Research on E-Commerce Platforms’ Return Policies Considering Consumers Abusing Return Policies," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(18), pages 1-19, September.
    9. Adachi, Takanori & Tremblay, Mark J., 2020. "Business-to-business bargaining in two-sided markets," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    10. Jie Zhang & Yanju Zhou & Xiaohong Chen & Maggie Wenjing Liu, 2025. "Quality investment and subsidy strategies of platforms for smart home control hub," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 3283-3324, August.
    11. Wu, Jie & Li, Yunbing & Dong, Yu & Zha, Yong, 2023. "Sponsored data: A game-theoretic model with consumer multihoming behaviour," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 307(2), pages 731-744.
    12. Hui Li & Feng Zhu, 2021. "Information Transparency, Multihoming, and Platform Competition: A Natural Experiment in the Daily Deals Market," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(7), pages 4384-4407, July.
    13. Saruta, Fuyuki, 2021. "Exclusive contracts and multihoming agents in two-sided markets," MPRA Paper 110070, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Sui, Ronghua & Zhang, Xumei & Dan, Bin & Zhang, Haiyue & Liu, Yi, 2023. "Bilateral value-added service investment in platform competition with cross-side network effects under multihoming," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 304(3), pages 952-963.
    15. Amit Kumar Bardhan & Saad Ashraf, 2024. "More buyers or more sellers: on marketing resource allocation strategies of competing two-sided platforms," Electronic Commerce Research, Springer, vol. 24(4), pages 2579-2608, December.
    16. Paolo Siciliani & Emanuele Giovannetti, 2019. "Platform competition and incumbency advantage under heterogeneous switching cost — exploring the impact of data portability," Bank of England working papers 839, Bank of England.
    17. Shekhar, Shiva, 2020. "Zero Pricing Platform Competition," MPRA Paper 99364, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    18. S. Sriram & Puneet Manchanda & Mercedes Bravo & Junhong Chu & Liye Ma & Minjae Song & Scott Shriver & Upender Subramanian, 2015. "Platforms: a multiplicity of research opportunities," Marketing Letters, Springer, vol. 26(2), pages 141-152, June.
    19. Christian Bach & Robert Edwards & Christian Jaag, 2023. "Postal Platform Pricing with Limited Consumer Attention," Working Papers 202318, University of Liverpool, Department of Economics.
    20. Etro, Federico, 2023. "Platform competition with free entry of sellers," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 89(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05513277. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.