Abstract: In the era of digital economy, data, as a factor of production has an impact on the pricing decisions of platform enterprises. On the basis of summarizing the typical facts about the value of platform market data, this paper establishes a mathematical model to discuss the influence of data on the pricing and revenue for platform enterprises of different sizes, and focuses on the mechanism of how data volume and data processing technology influence pricing. The research shows that the pricing decisions of companies of different sizes are usually affected by data — with the support of data, small and medium-sized businesses tend to gain more profits by raising prices, while their larger counterparts care more about how to achieve complete price discrimination, which is actually lower than traditional monopoly pricing. On this basis, this paper argues that vigilance should be maintained for major platform enterprises that usurp consumer surplus through perfect price discrimination, and that not-so-large firms can be provided with technical support to promote market competition and prevent those giant corporations from abusing their dominant position in the market.

Key words: scale of platform enterprise, pricing decision, data advantage, price discrimination