Whole Foods Market Structure

Monopolies are defined as an industry dominated by one corporation, or business, like standard oil. They are a main driver of inequality, as profits concentrate more on wealth in the hands of the few.(Atlantic). A monopoly has total or nearly all control of that industry. They are considered an extreme result of the U.S. free market capitalism. The business own everything, from the goods to the supplies to the infrastructure. This company will become big enough to buy out other competitors or even crush their competitor by lowering their prices to get the other business to go out of business. They will then control the whole industry without any restarted, having the prices be what they want and the product to be in what condition they want

Monopolies are quite dangerous economically, and are usually broken up by the federal government, with only two exceptions- electricity, and gas. These are modern examples. A monopoly is the economic term for when a company that makes a product has no competition, and can raise the prices as high as they want. For example, the most obvious and powerful monopoly of the industrial revolution was the railroad monopoly. They made money quite quickly as a shipping company, and destroyed any and all competition as the only transcontinental railroad at the time. It’s leader, Cornelius Vanderbilt came to be considered one of the most powerful people of all time, due to his control over who he shipped for.

In these circumstances, the cost structures are not the same as with the competitive industry and so we cannot say that the oligopolistic firm results in higher prices than if a competitive market structure were to be adopted. In fact going along the theory of the downward sloping cost curve we can come to the conclusion that it would be the other way around and consumers would

In a monopolistically competitive industry, the goods sold, while not perfect substitutes, can be viewed as acceptable substitutes by most people. As a result, if Firm A raised the price of its good substantially, consumers would decrease the quantity demanded from Firm A and would move to other firms selling similar products. As a result, Firm A would sell few units at the new higher price. As the quantity a firm sells falls, so does its percentage of sales in the industry, also

1 - There is a separation of service and payment. Because monopolies are funded through taxation, they cannot go bankrupt - they can always get more funding from the public coffers. Therefore, monopolies have little incentive to be efficient.

Many companies and people have committed monopolies before they were illegal and even after it. A monopoly is when one person has complete control over a company and makes close to 100% of the profits but because of the The Sherman Antitrust Act passed on April 8, 1890, “combination in the form of trust and otherwise, conspiracy in restraint of trade.” In simple terms the act prohibited any forms of monopoly in business and marketing fields. Monopolies committed before the Act, making it legal in every way but unethical, by some of the famously known marketers like John D. Rockefeller making him filthy rich. While others committed after The Sherman Antitrust Act caused a company like Microsoft to be sued and have a bruised ego.

Cartel - firms ,especially dominant players, gather together to set up a price according to the profit maximisation in the whole market. In this case, firms act like a monopoly. The price of products of each firms is fixed, thus reduction of price competition will be achieved. Instead of pricing strategy, firms will compete each other over non-price competition, for example, advertising. Like monopoly, customers’ interest might be sacrificed because price is constructed according to the market’s profit maximisation point, whole industry can gain abnormal profit, which means customers pay more than they actually need to. According to the figure 1, price of products under cartel is set up at P because of profit maximisation E (MC=MR), and abnormal profit is PP2FG. However, cartel is illegal in many countries, including UK.

There are four types of market structures: Monopolistic Competition, Monopoly, Oligopoly, and Perfect Competition. Monopolistic Competition is also known as competitive market. In this market structure, there are a large number of firms that produce similar but somewhat differentiated products for the same target customers. The market share is also divided among large number of firms making it difficult for one firm to become the market leader. On the other hand, Monopoly is a type of market structure in which only one firm controls the whole industry. There are strict barriers to entry for new firms due to governmental restrictions or the monopolistic power of the firm itself. In Oligopoly, the whole industry is dominated by a few large scale firms that set prices, introduce innovative products, and use heavy campaigns to attract buyers. All other small scale firms follow the changing market patterns set by these oligopolistic firms. Lastly, perfect competition is a market structure in which there are a larger number of firms that produce similar as well as differentiated products for

There will always be someone else trying to sell your product for less money. Many monopolies are enforced by government. One example would be operating a cab in New York City. You would need a government issued medallion. The number of medallions are fixed which develops profits for initial owners. The profits are not because of talents or resources, instead these profits come by the absence of government enforcement of the medallion requirement. The government enforcement of monopolies is an attempt to solve market failure. An example would be New York City enforcing the medallion rules because they are under the assumption that if they don’t restrict cabs, there would be a lot more traffic jams in the city. When government enforcement of monopolies is appointed for the well-being of subset being granted a monopoly instead of the well-being of society, that is when greed steps in. But monopolies can also improve welfare. For instance, a drug company developing new heart medication will pay lots of money in research and development for perfecting the drug without selling anything to achieve revenue. It anticipates that it will sell under a patent over some period of time and cover the development cost. If you take away the monopoly it takes away the motivation to produce better drugs. So if markets are not competitive then greed isn’t really a problem. It is only a

Whole Foods Market is a superstore chain in Austin Texas that deals in natural and organic food products exclusively. The organization ranks among the most socially responsible organizations in the world, and the fourth placed in the US Environmental Protection Agency list. The trading organization exists within a market crowded with competitors from its area of operations, and those who offer contrary products to what it proposes. Therefore, answer to the question of how it manages to survive within such a competitive environment is only understandable if we evaluate the different types of market structures. The markets have different characteristics, which determine the strategies applied by the various organizations in the continuum (Etro, 2009).

The allocation of resources has been long debated by society, the government and economists. The pay gap between the rich and poor continues to grow and to accommodate this there are taxes, government restrictions and policies. The economic pie is never equally divided and wont be in a capitalist economy however, trying to narrow the gap between the rich and poor will overall be beneficial to society. Thus, the two rules of fairness come into play, ‘it is not fair if the result isn’t fair’ and ‘it’s not fair if the rules aren’t fair’.

In the short run the perfect competition equilibrium can be found by graphing the marginal cost (MC), average total cost (ATC) and marginal revenue (MR) curves. In perfect competition the price is equal to the average revenue, which is equal to the marginal revenue and these are all constant, giving an infinitely elastic demand curve for the firm. The demand curve is “perfectly price elastic” due to the homogeneity of the products supplied, where each supplier, as a price taker, must focus on a single price. Given this, the only choice a supplier has in the short run is how much to produce. For profit maximisation to occur marginal costs (supply curve) must equal marginal revenue (demand curve). Profit maximisation is assumed to mean the maximisation of normal economic profit (i.e. revenue that covers the

Entrants erode the market and rarely grow it enough to the incumbent’s advantage. New entrants have an impact on the industry business but at a moderate level. This is mainly because new firms will find it difficult to compete against the incumbents’ strong brand, like Starbucks and McDonalds, and because the market is saturated. However, the costs of entry are relatively low. Most of the raw materials are cheap and the distribution chain is not complicated. This makes it easy for new companies to enter the market. Also, established companies might leverage their brands as they enter the industry to compete against the incumbents.

Again, with high entry barriers they are not bombarded with other firms coming and going from their market. (Samuelson and Marks, 2010).

One step away from perfect competition is monopolistic competition. This type of market structure has a number of different characteristics from the above. Which turn it into one of the most used market structures. In this scenario, companies are not all price takers and start making use of economies of scale in order to improve efficiency, reduce costs and increase profits. In the scenario companies sell a differentiated product at different prices. Like in perfect competition no barriers are put to entry and newcomers a constant threat to the market keeping every player always in search for a better mean to produce and compete.