Abstract:Recently, more and more ridehailing platforms are being aggregated into thirdparty platforms, thus creating an aggregation mode. How to achieve the strategic switch is an important issue for ridehailing platforms under the aggregation mode. Considering a comprehensive ridehailing platform that offers both premium and standard services, this paper studies the optimal service strategy and pricing for such a platform. The effects of different service strategies on the pricing and profits of both the standard platform (i.e., one that only provides standard service) and the aggregated platform are examined. By comparing the equilibrium outcomes in the two decision scenarios, it is found that when the brand advantage of the comprehensive ridehailing platform is significant (i.e., a low acceptance degree for the general platform) and the service cost is low, the platform will adopt a premium service strategy. Conversely, it will forgo the standard service when the advantage weakens. However, when the consumers’ acceptance degree for the general ridehailing platform is low, the premium service strategy will harm the general platform. As the consumers’ acceptance degree increases, the general ridehaling platform will benefit from the premium service, while the aggregation platform can obtain higher profits from standard service. This result shows that the winwin situation for all parties involved might only occur when the comprehensive platform provides standard services. This conclusion provides a good theoretical guide for the cooperation between the traditional ridehailing platform and aggregation platform.