Market Power 1. Introduction With the development of economics, market power is a heated topic. Motta (2005) states that market power refers to the ability of firms to set prices above marginal costs in the book called Competition Policy: Theory and Practice. George A. Hay thinks “The modern concept of the market power focuses on the potential for consumers to suffer injury through the actions of a single firm or a group of firms acting in concert”(1991) in his essay about market power in antitrust. Market power is one of the standards that can measure whether a firm is a monopolist or a competitor. Generally, a monopolistic firm has high market share and possesses large market power in its industry. A typical instance is that both of Staples and Office Depot have great market power with high market share. Both of them are large United States office supply chain stores. Based on the following graph, it is easy to find that the annual sales of Staples and Office Depot are much greater than their rival, OfficeMax, given that both of the annual sales of Staples and Office Depot are more than $10 million but that of Officemax is approximately $7 million. It implies that they have more market power than other office supply stores, which illustrates that they have the power to master the market price of stationery. Source: Staples, Office Depot and OfficeMax Company websites and SEC filings Figure 1 Comparison of number of store and annual sales among Staples, Office Depot
Competition is prevalent in various aspects of life, including sports, school, and jobs. Everyone at some point in their lifetime will have to compete against others in order to achieve a goal or earn a prize. It’s how the world has worked for a long time; it’s survival of the fittest and this minor competition between everyone is how we have continuously gotten smarter, faster, and stronger. Competition is necessary to a certain degree, but how much is too much? It’s definitely not a bad thing, and as long as there’s a healthy amount, it can be beneficial because it fosters self-improvement, and it will push people to go all out and try their absolute best.
The power of buyers in the industry varies at different levels depending on the field. For pharmaceutical drug companies, which have thousands of patients, customers have lower price sensitivity as they are rarely able to refuse the treatments they need and they have low bargaining leverage due to commonly lack of information as well as knowledge on the drugs. For biotech firms that distribute specialized products to the government and hospitals, their customers actually have more of a bargaining power due to being the sole consumer sources
In Document 4 “A Call to Action,” by James B. Weaver, it explained to the public through the author's thoughts of that monopolies had too much power and that the monopolies destroy competition and trade. This book was written at the time of when big corporations were taking over and destroying competition. Also, the author goes into detail that they control the price of the raw material, so they can produce their products at a low price and sell it at a low price. By selling that the lowest price, the competitors can not compete are driven out of business or reduce the wages of the workers. This idea can be related to current times were big corporations, such as Walmart, are destroying competition because they lower their prices that the competitors cannot compete with.
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.
Bargaining Power of Buyers: The bargaining power of buyers is high in the department store retail industry. The volume of buyers is high, and buyers are very price sensitive in this industry. The products are not highly differentiated, and there are numerous stores that offer the same, or similar, products, giving buyers the opportunity to search for the lowest prices and information. The industry has substitutes available in the form of specialty, differentiated products and stores. This increases the power of buyers,
Individual firm’s market share is tiny compared to the other three market powers, such as monopolistic, oligopoly, and pure monopoly. In a perfect competition system the type of products are homogenous, so each competitor would be selling the same product or service. There is also no barrier to entry so firms can enter and exit the market freely without barriers from regulation or cost.
A major feature of an oligopoly market is that any singular firm has the power to set market prices. This is evident in the example of Coles and Woolworths in Australia as they dominate the market share with 72.5%. Due to there only being a small number of firms, they are able to set their prices and change price and
In our case, the public would be harmed by not enforcing the non-competition provision. If the provision is not enforced, it would result in the reduction of an embryologist. Since there are no other clinics in Iowa, patients would be underserved. The public would be deprived of medical services because having one less embryologist would increase the workload on the remaining embryologist until a new embryologist is hired. Enforcing the non-competition provision would negatively impact the public. As mentioned previously, the process can be extensive considering there is likely a high demand in Iowa to find employment in this field.
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.
The purpose of this paper is to look into a case of antitrust behavior being investigated involving Johnson and Johnson and Novartis AG, and to analyze and discuss the various antitrust practices that the organizations involved are accused of utilizing. Its purpose is also to discuss how the practices being deployed in this scenario can help any of the organizations to secure market power, which is defined by the ability of a firm to profitably raise the market price of a good or service over marginal cost (Market Power). Finally, it will also discuss the impact that an oligopoly in this case has on society, and will determine whether such scenarios are helpful or harmful to
Based on eq.5, we can make several observations of the properties of Cournot competition. First, given positive market share, firms in Cournot market have the market power to price higher than their marginal costs. Second, the market power of a firm is limited by the market elasticity of demand. The more elastic demand,
Microeconomic theory states that a firm has market power when the prices charged are higher that its efficient cost of production. It is this market power of airports that brings in the need for regulation. The market power of airports has three main components –
If the business is a monopolist, then it has price-setting power. At the other extreme, if a firm
The power of the consumers of Mr Price is large as they determine the success or failure of the company as they have the ability to purchase goods and help with the success of Mr Price or not purchase.
The bargaining power of buyers: Buyers have more control over an industry than one might think. They want lower prices, higher quality, and more services and this makes the competitors play against each other. The profitability suffers as each competitor tries to make their product or service better (Dess, p. 54). McDonald’s has a $1.00 menu as does Burger King and Wendy’s. Each time I go into either of them there is a better item added to the $1.00 menu. For instance, McDonald’s has the scrumptious Double Cheeseburger and Wendy’s has the