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McDonald's Market Structure

Decent Essays

Market Structure: The organization and characteristics of a specific market where a company operates is referred to as market structure. While markets can basically be classified by their degree of competitiveness and pricing, there are four types of markets i.e. perfect competition, monopolistic competition, monopoly, and oligopoly. In perfect competition markets, many firms are price takers whereas monopolistic competition markets are characterized by the ability of some firms to have market power. In contrast, oligopoly markets are those in which few firms can be price makers while monopoly market is where one firm can be a price maker. McDonald's franchise operates in oligopoly market since the fast food industry is one of the major industries with this type of markets. Some of the common features of oligopolistic markets are price rigidity and price war that have significant impacts on the firm's pricing strategies. The reason for the operation of this franchise in oligopolistic markets is that fast food industry is characterized by a small number of large producers or sellers. As a result, every large seller in the industry has a perceptible impact on other sellers as they influence the market. The oligopolistic market structure proves to be very efficient for the franchise in making its pricing decisions and developing and executing its own strategies. Actually, the structure enables McDonalds to know its rivals well and keenly examine their strategies and

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