Business Analysis : The Corn Industry

An oligopolistic market is one that has several dominant firms with the power to influence the market they are in; an example of this could be the supermarket industry which is dominated by several firms such as Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose etc... Furthermore an oligopolistic market can be defined in terms of its structure and its conduct, which involve various different aspects of economics.

This would be “a market structure in which a few firms dominate” (Economics Online, 2015). When this occurs the market takes on a different appearance that is said to be highly concentrated because there may be several businesses operating in the same market. Heavy hitters in the retail industry would be mass merchant entities such as Wal-mart, Costco, and Target. These massive retailers have a share interest in controlling the retail market by manipulating various barriers of entry. Similar to those barriers of entry that are associated with a monopolized market, higher costs and such, these giants can also manipulate pricing to ensure that a newcomer could not compete. Price undercutting or predatory pricing may be done even at a loss for these retail giants if means keeping the oligopoly market structure with fewer new competitors. Various may be use these oligopolists strong name and customer loyalty base. Often times an oligopoly may experience a kinked-demand curve where there are two distinct segments with different elasticities that combine to form a kink. The kinked-demand curve is a good way to explain price rigidity in oligopoly where one segment is relatively more elastic in prices increasing and the other segment is less elastic in prices decreasing. “The relative elasticities of these two segments is directly based on the

Many utilities are monopolies by having the entire market share in certain areas. With deregulation of these utilities, the market becomes open to competition for market share to begin. In terms of regulation of monopoly, the government attempts to prevent operations that are against the public interest, call anti-competitive practices. Likewise, oligopoly is a market condition where there are minimal distributors that have a major influence on prices and other market factors. This causes market failure, especially if evidence of collusive behavior by dominant businesses is found.

A monopoly is distinguished from a monopsony, in which there is only one buyer of a product or service; a monopoly may also have monopsony control of a sector of a market. Likewise, a monopoly should be distinguished from a cartel (a form of oligopoly), in which several providers act together to coordinate services, prices or sale of goods. Monopolies, monopsonies and oligopolies are all situations such that one or a few of the entities have market power and therefore interact with their customers (monopoly), suppliers (monopsony) and

An oligopoly is “a market situation in which relatively few sellers [like Burger King, McDonald’s] compete and high start-up costs form barriers to keep out new competitors [like Five Guys Burgers and Fries]” (Boone and Kurtz, 2012, p. 80). Within this competitive fast food burger industry, the main product being offered is a hamburger.

Oligopolies are a type of market structure evident in Australia, which is comprised of 2 or more firms having a significant share of the market. In an oligopoly the few firms sell similar but differentiated or homogenous products and is characterised by a large number of buyers making it a form of imperfect competition. This market structure is evident through the Big Four Banks, Phone Industry - Vodafone, Optus and Telstra.

5.(Market Structures) Determine whether each of the following is a characteristic of perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and/or monopoly:

Many Americans live and die by the saying “time is money.”. In the essays, Industrial Corn by Michael Pollan and “From the Frying Pan Into the Fire,” by Arlie Russell Hochschild the statement “time is money” is widely portrayed. They both write about how people want to be as effective and timely as possible. Both of these essays show that people demonstrate and are influenced by capitalistic ideas, especially that of efficiency in their daily lives. In Hochschild’s essay, she ventures into how capitalism influences Americans through her perspective on an Quaker Oats cereal commercial she analyzes. In Pollan’s essay, he describes how the influences of efficiency have changed the production and uses of corn throughout America. As America has transitioned to becoming increasingly

Oligopolies have been around ever since there is trade. However, it has only recently gained grounds in this age of globalisation. Never before has oligopolistic competition been so fiercely contested across so many industries.

(7) A monopolist can discriminate prices for his product, a firm working under perfect competition cannot. The monopolist will be increasing his total profit by price discrimination if he find? Elastic ties of demand are different in different markets.

8. Compared to a perfectly competitive industry with the same demand and cost curves, a monopoly’s price and output will be which of the following?

•Oligopoly: This is an industry with very little firms in the market. If they conspire, they weaken output and raise profits the way a monopoly would and should do. For example the mobile phone industry is an oligopoly what with so many companies for example Apple, LG and Samsung all competing together. Supermarkets are oligopoly’s as they make supernormal profits as well.

“An observation made of oligopolistic business behaviour in which one company, usually the dominant competitor among

When only a few sellers offer a product with little regard to competition it is called an oligopoly. It is different from a monopoly because multiple corporations are involved, but the effects on the consumer are the same - bad. Although competition is usually in the best interest of the consumer, it is not always in the best interest of the corporation. If we examine the two leading soft drink producers, Coca-cola and Pepsi-cola, we see a prime example of an oligopoly (Zachary, 1999). As things are presently, each of these soft drink companies has about half of the soft drink market, and examined from a world-wide perspective that is a pretty large market. Either one of them, Coke or Pespi, could conceivably lower their prices in

An oligopoly, is when there are only a few number of companies that control a specific market. The barriers to entry can be both legal/political (ie. number of licenses awarded to cell phone operators) to the fact that the companies themselves create a "cartel like" attitude effectively brushing of the market new entrants through aggressive measures like undercutting pricing on new smaller entrants, controlling inputs for production, etc.