The Pricing Strategy of Digital Content Resources Based on a Stackelberg Game
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
This is an interesting study, and the author used the Stackelberg game model to analyse the profit function composition of the digital content resource producers and publishers and explore the equilibrium relationships between the various factors that affect the pricing strategy. The article is well written, however in my opinion, following points should be improved the manuscript.
1. Author needs to explain the contribution of this study in the abstract.
2. The introduction needs to be revised with the current reference.
3. Authors should provide separate sections for discussion and contribution of the result.
4. Limitation and future recommendation part should be separate from the conclusion.
5. Authors need to provide the procedure of data simulation and the type of data used (through getting simulation results and plots through MATLAB) in this study.
6. Author should discuss the advantage of the multistage game model over the single-stage game model.
7. In the introduction, the research objective of this study needs to be clarified.
8. In the introduction author mentioned (“producers and publishers, and further refine the key factors affecting the pricing in the model construction”). Please discuss these with the reader.
9. In Figures 2 and 3, the authors should mention the source of the plot for this graph.
10. Several abbreviations are used here; if possible, please create an abbreviation table.
11. Please rectify the grammatical errors.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Article entitled The pricing strategy of digital content resources based on a Stackelberg game is an interesting take on the subject.
Such analyzes are extremely necessary and add value to science. It should be noted that the article meets the quality requirements and standards for this type of studies in the prestigious Sustainability journal.
After reviewing the reviewer's comments, the article may be published.
However, there are a few things to improve:
1. The list of bibliographies and footnotes in the text should be corrected. Both the numbering in the text and the list at the end of the article should be in the order in which the given source appears in the text.
2. The second point should be significantly extended: Analysis of the factors affecting the pricing of digital content resources. The analysis of the literature on the subject should be in-depth.
3. The authors called the fourth point "Results and Discussion", but there is no element of discussion. I suggest separating these two elements and doing the Discussion separately. This point should also be an in-depth analysis of secondary research, research conducted by other authors - both domestic for the authors of the article and foreign, to show the relationships and differences - which is also an added value for a given scientific discourse.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your comments on the manuscript and your valuable suggestions for improvement. We have carefully revised the manuscript. Here is our response to your suggestions. Please refer to the revised manuscript for details.
- The list of bibliographies and footnotes in the text should be corrected. Both the numbering in the text and the list at the end of the article should be in the order in which the given source appears in the text.
We have corrected the way in which literature is cited. On the one hand, we have rearranged the order according to the order in which the literature appears in the paper. On the other hand, we have updated the older literature and added 15 references in recent years.
- The second point should be significantly extended: Analysis of the factors affecting the pricing of digital content resources. The analysis of the literature on the subject should be in-depth.
We updated some references to the second part of the influencing factors of digital content resource pricing, and further analyzed the supporting role of the literature on the relevant content. The current adjustment makes the influencing factor analysis more convincing.
- The authors called the fourth point "Results and Discussion", but there is no element of discussion. I suggest separating these two elements and doing the Discussion separately. This point should also be an in-depth analysis of secondary research, research conducted by other authors - both domestic for the authors of the article and foreign, to show the relationships and differences - which is also an added value for a given scientific discourse.
Thank you for your suggestion. The "Results and Discussion" in the fourth part of this paper mainly analyze the management guiding significance of the game equilibrium solution. Through numerical simulation analysis, we can more intuitively understand the mutual constraints between different factors. In fact, the equilibrium result of the game has been obtained in the third section, and the fourth section mainly focuses on the simulation analysis and discussion of the equilibrium solution more intuitively. In view of the objection raised by more than one reviewer, we revised Part 4 to "Simulation and Discussion" and Part 3 to "Methods and Results". The discussion part in the previous manuscript mainly focuses on the theory and practical application, lacking the support of previous studies on the findings of this paper. We have added previous research to this part according to the comments of the reviewer, which makes the research results more convincing and improves the quality of the paper to a certain extent.
Thanks again for your valuable suggestions. The quality of the article has been greatly improved after the revision.
With best wishes,
Dr. Yan Zhao
Reviewer 3 Report
The article explores an interesting topic but has some flaws that need to be addressed:
1- The abstract lacks research methods, information gathering tools, findings and suggestions.
2- The referencing method is wrong, why do the reference numbers start from 40?
3- All references under 2015 should be removed and replaced with new references (last two years).
4- Self-citations are all fake and should be removed, this is unethical and if you repeat this, your name will be blacklisted in international publications.
5- In the research method part, it is not clear where the data was obtained.
6- The practical suggestions provided are very incomprehensible and heavy and not suitable for pricing managers, rewrite this part with more colloquial language.
Author Response
Please see the attachment.
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 4 Report
Remarq: for authors
· To be reviewed if all the works indicated in References are cited.
· More relevant dates is supposed to be provided through Section 3, Methods & Section 4, Results and Discussion.
· More relevant connection between the good theoretical approaching, formulas and the concret study case , ”the pricing strategy of digital content resources”, is requested.
Connectedness of thinking and coherence of ideas
The main contribution of this manuscript, according with the author, is to make an innovative demonstration and analysis of the factors affecting the value of digital content resources, especially the improvement of the sales model. It lays a theoretical foundation for accurately portraying the profit function of the game players and opens a direction for exploring a reasonable pricing strategy of digital content resources.
The Strengths and Opportunities (S&O )points of the article
The article respected the rigors of a scientific work.
This is a topical issue.
The paper consists of five sections.
Introduction - Section 1 well provides the background information necessary to understand the topic.
The second section, Analysis of the factors affecting the pricing of digital content resources presents the analysis of the related factors affecting the pricing of digital content resources.
Section 3, Methods, proposes the hypotheses and presents the construction and equilibrium analysis of the Stackelberg game model.
According to the theory of supply chain management, the specific process of the Stackelberg game model for the pricing strategy of digital content products is as follows. First, considering the copyright peculiarities of digital content resources, producers have a first-mover advantage and have the power to determine the viewing effect of digital content resources. Therefore, digital content resource producers are leaders in the transaction link, and publishers are followers. Second, digital content resource producers require a certain percentage of the revenue that may be obtained during the dissemination of content resources based on the viewing effect. Finally, digital content resource publishers determine an appropriate unit price based on the above information and their own capabilities.
Section 4, Results and Discussion, presents the simulation analysis of the influencing factors of digital content resource revenue.
According to the equilibrium solution of the sales unit price, MATLAB software is used to carry out the numerical simulation analysis, and the simulation result are shown in well done figures and tables.
The authors summarize the pricing phenomenon of the publishers as follows: the pricing strategy adopted by the publishers is the cost-plus pricing method [1], and the gross profit of the addition is approximately two units
Section 5, Conclusions, explores the relevant factors that affect the pricing strategy. Combined with the process analysis of the pricing strategy, key factors such as the viewing effect, revenue sharing ratio, and sales unit price are selected from the influencing factors as important analytical parameters. Using the Stackelberg game model, the authors constructed a pricing strategy game model in which the producer is the leader and the publisher is the follower. By solving the equilibrium solution of the game model and performing a numerical simulation analysis on it. The authors cn more intuitively describe the mutual restraint relationship between the various factors that affect the pricing.
(1) The digital content resource publishers adopt a cost-plus pricing method for the single broadcast price.
(2) The revenue-sharing ratio of digital content resource producers decreases as the single broadcast cost increases.
(3) The viewing effect of digital content resources is affected by multiple factors, such as copyright fees, investment difficulty, sales coefficient, and unit cost.
The data are well represented graphically and in tables.
Weaknesses and Threats (W&T) points of the article
- W&T
1.
This work well provides the background information necessary to understand the topic, but:
”The pricing strategy of digital content resources based on a Stackelberg game” analysis the related factors affecting the pricing of digital content resources.., but more relevant dates is supposed to be provided through Section 3, Methods & Section 4, Results and Discussion.
More relevant connection between the good theoretical approaching, formulas and the concret study case , The pricing strategy of digital content resources, is requested.
2.
Bibliographic material is cited in the body of article, but is not clear if all the works indicated in References are mentioned.
Author Response
Dear reviewer,
Thank you for your comments on the manuscript and your valuable suggestions for improvement. We have carefully revised the manuscript. Here is our response to your suggestions. Please refer to the revised manuscript for details.
Response to your first comment.Thanks to your suggestions, we have improved the theoretical methods, model construction, case studies and discussion of results of the article, and added some literature support according to the latest research. This is an important basis for the rationality of the method selection and the reliability of the conclusion in this paper.
Response to your second comment. Yes, we have carefully read and confirmed the literature cited in the article, and the following References list also cited all works.
Thanks again for your valuable suggestions. The quality of the article has been greatly improved after the revision.
With best wishes,
Dr. Yan Zhao
