食物外送平台是否應該強制商家統一內外用價格？

Abstract

食物外送產業是一個成長快速且頗具發展潛力的產業。然而近期由於消費者發現登錄在食物外送平台App上的餐點價格比實際店面價格高而引起許多爭議。為避免消費者反彈與其他法律爭議，部分食物外送平台決定採取「統一定價」的價格規範策略：強制合作餐廳制定的店面內用價格與線上登錄價格必須一致。但餐廳可能因為失去定價彈性而導致營運無效率，連帶影響平台的獲利。而部分平台採取「差別定價」的價格規範策略：允許合作餐廳自由決定餐點價格。因此，本論文試圖比較實務中兩種不同價格規範策略：「統一定價」與「差別定價」對平台的影響，並找出平台選擇不同價格規範策略的因素。 在本論文中，我們透過建立一個賽局理論模型來回答我們的研究問題。模型所討論的情境如下：市場中存在一個獨占的食物外送平台、一間餐廳與一群消費者。平台先選擇價格規範策略並透過制定運費來最大化自身利益，接著餐廳必須依照價格規範策略的規定制定餐點價格來最大化利潤，最後消費者則可以選擇實際到店面用餐、使用食物外送服務或是不購買餐點。 透過比較兩種不同價格規範策略下的平台獲利，我們發現當消費者的等待成本降低或平台的抽成比例減少時，餐廳需要比較高的彈性來因應需求差異大的消費者，因此「差別定價」能使整個系統有效率地營運，為平台帶來較高的利潤。再者，我們發現當平台給外送員的補貼增加時，平台需要提高每筆訂單的獲利，透過「差別定價」能讓餐廳有提高訂單單價的空間，進而讓平台獲得更高的利潤。

Food delivery is a fast-growing industry with high potential. However, recently, the markups on the online menu prices cause fierce controversy. To prevent consumer irritation and avoid possible law issues, some food delivery platforms adopt “uniform pricing” to force restaurants to set a uniform price on different channels. Nevertheless, this makes restaurants suffer from less flexibility and may hurt the platform’s profitability. On the contrary, some platforms allow “differentiated pricing” and let restaurants decide different prices on different channels. Hence, the major purpose of our work is to study the profitability of these two price regulation strategies and figure out factors that affect the platform’s adoption of price regulation strategy. We present a game-theoretic model to consider a market with a group of customers, a restaurant, and a monopolistic platform. First, the food delivery platform chooses one price regulation strategy and sets the per transaction freight. The restaurant then follows the rules of price regulation strategy and sets the meal prices. Last, customers decide to dine in the restaurant, to use food delivery services, or to buy nothing. We obtain two main results. First, when the unit waiting cost per unit waiting time or the commission rate decreases, the restaurant needs higher flexibility to satisfy customer demands. By adopting differentiated pricing, the system can be operated more efficiently, and the platform can earn more profits. Second, when the unit subsidization for drivers increases, the platform needs a higher profit margin. By adopting differentiated pricing, there is room for the restaurant to set a higher online price, and the platform can obtain higher profits.