Effects Of Oligopoly

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How Do Oligopolies affect the Beverage Industry?
In order to answer the question “How Do Oligopolies effect the Beverage Industry?” we must first understand what an Oligopoly is. An Oligopoly is a market form in which a market or industry is dominated by a small number of sellers. An oligopoly is much like a monopoly, in which only one company exerts control over most of a market. In an oligopoly, there are at least two firms controlling the market. So what exactly does this mean? To put this into perspective an Industry, such as the Beverage Industry, is composed of various sellers. However there are two main companies that control the Industry, they are Pepsi Co. and The Coca-Cola Company. Although there are several other companies such as …show more content…

In the Beverage Industry Coca-Cola owns approximately 42% of the Industry where as Pepsi Co. owns approximately 30%. Since 1886, Coca-Cola has been present in the market where as Pepsi Co. entered the market 13 years later. Oligopolies perpetuate themselves and discourage new investments in several ways. One example is having access to key resources, whether it’s natural resources or patented process or special knowledge. This creates difficulty for new firms to enter the industry without access to those resources. In addition with experience of keeping cost low, oligopolies benefit significantly in cost advantages which discourages new firms from entering. An example of this would be a new firm attempting to attract new consumers with a new product rather than an established product. With having an established product oligopolies are able to obtain lower prices from supplies thus allowing them to create predatory pricing aimed at driving smaller competitors out of business. Since they are the two dominant market holders in the Beverage Industry they acquire most of the sales volume. This allows the companies to reduce prices on their products to discourage new firms to continue as they will have to follow the trend. In contrast they increase prices to remain in the market and protect their industry from the expansion or interest of other

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