The author systematically examines one of the important issues of information — establishing the market price. He introduces the concept of «search» — where a buyer wanting to get a better price, is forced to question sellers. The article deals with various aspects of finding the necessary information.

Economics of Information

Business Models: Origin, Development and Future Research Perspectives

Services of different types have become increasingly important for product firms. While these firms mainly focus on products, managers and researchers lack a comprehensive framework to understand when to make significant investments in particular kinds of services. We identify three categories of product-related services from a product firm—smoothing and adapting services, which complement products, and substitution services, which enable customers to pay for the use of a product without buying the product itself. We develop propositions about the relative level of these different kinds of services vis-a-vis industry evolution, as well as suggest how these services affect industry structure. We draw upon various literatures, though we conclude that the relationship between products and services is more complex and richer than any one literature suggests.

Services, industry evolution, and the competitive strategies of product firms

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is said to become an important cornerstone of the Internet of Services. However, while some market research and IT provider firms fervently support this point of view, others already conjure up the failure of this on-demand sourcing option. Oftentimes based on weak empirical data and shaky reasoning, these inconsistent perspectives lack scientific rigor and neglect to present a more differentiated picture of SaaS-adoption. This study seeks to deepen the understanding of factors driving the adoption of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Grounded in transaction cost theory, the resource-based view, and the theory of planned behavior, we develop a research model to assess SaaS-adoption at the application level. Survey data of 297 firms in Germany with 374 valid response items across different industries were collected to test the theoretical model. Our analysis revealed that patterns on the decision on SaaS-adoption differ across application types. Social influence, attitude toward SaaS-adoption, adoption uncertainty, and strategic value turned out to be the strongest and most consistent drivers across all application types. Furthermore, we found that firm size does not matter in SaaS-adoption, since large enterprises and small- and medium-sized companies had similar adoption rates. Overall, this study provides relevant findings that IT vendors can use to better appeal to potential companies that consider adopting SaaS.

/pdf/drivers-of-saas-adoption-an-empirical-study-of-different-4ebpfwgvbi.pdf

Drivers of SaaS-Adoption – An Empirical Study of different Application Types

Cloud computing is emerging as a promising field offering a variety of computing services to end users. These services are offered at different prices using various pricing schemes and techniques. End users will favor the service provider offering the best QoS with the lowest price. Therefore, applying a fair pricing model will attract more customers and achieve higher revenues for service providers. This work focuses on comparing many employed and proposed pricing models techniques and highlights the pros and cons of each. The comparison is based on many aspects such as fairness, pricing approach, and utilization period. Such an approach provides a solid ground for designing better models in the future. We have found that most approaches are theoretical and not implemented in the real market, although their simulation results are very promising. Moreover, most of these approaches are biased toward the service provider.

http://www.sersc.org/journals/IJGDC/vol6_no5/9.pdf

Cloud Computing Pricing Models: A Survey

Software as a Service

Due to the economic characteristics specific to the software industry, pricing concepts existing in other industries cannot be transferred without adaptation. Therefore, this article provides an overview of pricing models for software. In this context we discuss the six parameters formation of prices, structure of payment flow, assessment base, price discrimination, price bundling, and dynamic pricing strategies. Furthermore, we refer to recent software delivery models, such as Software as a service. The results are based on literature research and empirical studies.

/pdf/pricing-strategies-of-software-vendors-3qviqm5ods.pdf

Pricing Strategies of Software Vendors

Software as a Service (SaaS) offerings are continuing to grow in importance. Due to this new form of software delivery, software vendors have to design appropriate pricing models for their SaaS offerings. This paper analyzes a) the disclosure of pricing information and b) the applied price metrics of SaaS business software building on the economics of information theory which recommends information activities (signaling and screening) in order to reduce uncertainty between providers and customers. By means of a content analysis, we investigate the websites of 300 SaaS solutions offered by 259 US-based providers. Our results reveal that especially small and young SaaS providers use their websites to communicate pricing information in terms of signaling. Regarding SaaS providers´ screening activities within the scope of this paper, we find that less than 10% of the offered SaaS solutions apply usage-dependent pricing metrics.

Pricing of Software as a Service – An Empirical Study in View of the Economics of Information Theory

Aufgrund der spezifischen okonomischen Spielregeln der Softwareindustrie konnen bereits bekannte Preiskonzepte aus anderen Branchen nicht ohne weiteres auf Softwareprodukte ubertragen werden. Dieser Beitrag gibt daher einen Uberblick uber verschiedene Preisgestaltungsmoglichkeiten fur Softwareanbieter. Hierbei betrachten wir die sechs Parameter Preisbildung, Struktur des Zahlungsstroms, Bemessungsgrundlage, Preisdifferenzierung, Preisbundelung und dynamische Preisstrategien. Weiterhin wird auch auf neue Formen der Softwarebereitstellung, wie beispielsweise Software as a Service, Bezug genommen. Die Ergebnisse basieren auf Literaturrecherchen sowie empirischen Untersuchungen.

Sonja Lehmann

Papers

Software as a Service

Pricing Strategies of Software Vendors

Software as a Service

Pricing of Software as a Service – An Empirical Study in View of the Economics of Information Theory

Preisstrategien von Softwareanbietern