Domain Name Valuation Model Constructing and Emperical Evidence

Domain name is a new type intangible of enterprise. For the reason that we don´t recognize and measure the domain self-constructed in financial accounting system, there are little study on domain´s value estimation and the factors influencing its value. For the absence of value measurement, domain name´s valuation management is weak in firm. With the growth of domain trade-off, how to value it become crisis important. We find that traditional estimation methods, such as discount cash flow method etc, ignore some crucial non-financial factors that influence the domain value for instance creativity. We use the semantic theory and content analysis to analyze the value-influence factors which include Domain structure and Meaning and Impression and Creativity etc. Based on the analysis we establish a model which integrate the financial and non-financial factors to value the domain name using fuzzy method. Finally we use the experience data of domain trading to test the factors of influencing the domain value. We find that domain´s value actually correlates to the semantic characters. The first contribution of the paper is that it is based on semantic theory and content analysis. The second contribution is we use Econometrics method to investigate the domain´s value and find empirical evidence.