The UK petroleum industry consists of 3 main retailing ownership models. The 3 models are oil company, independent dealers and supermarkets. The concentration ratio in the petrol retail market has gone through a couple of changes over the past 10 years. Since 2004, the market share of supermarkets has increased by 10%, from 29% to 39%. In the same period, the market shares of oil companies and independent dealers dropped by 8%, from 37% to 29% and 1.6%, from 34% to 32.4% respectively. (UK petrol and diesel sector, 2013: 44-45). Please refer to Appendix A for the graphs. If we look at the market by types of ownership, it seems like oligopoly as 3 types of ownership dominate the industry. However, if we break it down into individual companies, the statistics reflects the opposite. Using the Herfindahl – Hirschman Index where the market share of each firm is squared and added up, we can find the market concentration of the UK petrol retail. (Modern Analyst, 2013)
Please refer to Appendix B for the table and values.
HHI = 16 ² + 15² + 14.1² + 10.4² + 9.7² + 9.4² + 6.1² + 5.4² + 4² + 2.4² + 2.4² + 1.2² + 1.2² + 1.1² + 0.7² + 0.5² + 0.2² + 0.1² + 0.1² + 0.1²
= 1069.21
As the HHI value is between 1000 and 1800. The UK petrol retail market is considered moderately concentrated which indicates that it is more towards monopolistic competition than oligopoly.
Although independent dealers make up 32.4% of the petrol market share, they own 59.9% of the forecourts in the UK. Oil companies and supermarkets own 25.5% and 14.6% of the forecourts in the UK respectively. (UK petrol and diesel sector, 2013: 45). Please refer to Appendix C for the graphs. Even though supermarkets own the least amount of the forecourts, they have the highest marke...
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...han ever. This shows that the petrol retail market sees a reduction in non-competitive behaviour, as the bigger retailers are not cutting the petrol price by a huge amount. There is substantial evidence to prove that the companies’ behaviour fit in with the non-collusive oligopoly: kinked demand curve theory, where prices remain stable with little apparent price competition.
While the market shares of the ownership types suggest that the UK petrol market is more towards monopolistic competition than oligopoly, the manner in which the companies behave indicates otherwise. Although both monopolistic competitive companies and oligopolies engage in non-price completion, the companies are interdependent and there are considerable barriers to entry. In this case, the UK petrol retail market reflects competitive oligopoly as the retailers are competing against each other.
Prior to the year of 1999, Exxon and Mobil were the two largest American oil companies, which were direct descendants of the John D. Rockefeller’s broken up Standard Oil Company. In 1998 Exxon and Mobil signed an eighty billion dollar merger agreement in hope to form Exxon Mobil Corporation, the largest company ever created. Such a merger seems astonishing, not only because it reunited parts of Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Company, but also because it would be extremely difficult for the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to approve this merger due to its size and importance in the oil market. In fact, it took the FTC an entire year after the merger was proposed to make a decision due to its rigorous analysis in the product and its geographic market, the concentration of the oil market, the potential anticompetitive effects of the merger, the effects towards their growth and labor force, and lastly, the likelihood of entry and the efficiencies that may affect anticompetitive concerns. Although all of these notions are played a role in the analysis of the merger, it is important to remember that the merger’s result efficiencies did outweigh the the anticompetitive risks that were involved, especially since the oil market was headed towards decreasing prices to expand production.
The Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s (ABC) news article titled, “Petrol price soars, more pain at the pump ahead,” discusses the rise in the price of fuel and its effect on Australian motorists. This article also discusses how this rise in the price of fuel occurred, mainly focusing on its effect on consumers (Janda 2014).
333-355. Hocking and Waud 1992, Oligopoly and Market Concentration' in Microeconomics 2nd Edition, Harper Educational Publishers, NSW, pp. 315-342. Kathleen Hanser, The Secret Behind High Profits at Low-fare Airlines'. a href="http://www.boeing.com/commercial/news/feature/profit.html">http://www.boeing.com/commercial/news/feature/profit.html/a> [accessed 15 May 2003]
Exxon and Mobil were two big competitors in the oil industry. In the 20th century, Exxon and Mobil operated with relatively low-price, and in low-margin environments. The market in the United States and Europe have grown and matured, allowing them both to grow with great success. The competitiveness has tightened worldwide in the crude oil business. Both companies have continued to advance new technologies, introducing new marketing innovations. They have extend there reach into high-growth markets. The two companies became more efficient, reduced costs, and increased shareholder’s value by there merge.
In the United States, modern car manufacturing has been historically dominated by the American companies including Ford Motor Co., Chrysler Group LLC, and General Motors Co. These three companies, known as the Detroit Three, controlled 95% of the market in the 1950’s and the dominance continued until the beginning of the 21st century. In the 1980’s Japanese auto manufacturers entered the United States, a decade later the Germans, and finally in 2000’s the Koreans. By the end of 2009, the Detroit Three only accounted for 45% of the total U.S. auto market. Another factor that had influence on this was constant fluctuations in gasoline prices and price sensitive consumers. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, gas prices hit record high averaging $3.07 per gallon in May 2007 and kept climbing up to $4.08 in July 2008. As gas prices kept increasing, consumer buying trends have been changing. In 2006 sales for SUVs, pickup trucks, and vans dropped 16%, while the market for compact cars rose by 3%. Unfortunately, the Detroit Three were not prepared for this since their...
Sedgwick, David. "Pricing Power shifts to suppliers." Automotive News (2012): 2. online. 20 May 2014. .
Federal Trade Commission. July 2005. Gasoline Price Changes: The Dynamic of Supply, Demand, and Competition. Retrieved from http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2005/07/gaspricefactor.htm.
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Monopoly and oligopoly are two economic market conditions. Both of them are likely to co-exist in our world and they differentiate from each other. In this written paper, I will describe the two market conditions. I will describe the characteristics of each one of them in terms of number of suppliers, product differentiation, advantages and disadvantages and the most challenging types of barriers to entry that exist in both of the market structures.
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