Free Essay On Antitrust Behaviour

An investigation was done on CVS and Rite Aid in the conduct of retail pharmacies over the decision they made on blocking contactless payments which were inclusive of Google Wallet and Apple Pay in their retail stores. As of now, the firm has put into consideration a class action to put Apple Pay service at Rite Aid and CVS stores and would like to receive responses from their consumers who are affected by the pharmacies’ decision. This antitrust behaviour had several costs one of them being that it is less secure when put in comparison to Apple’s services. Home Depot is an example where there were massive security breaches which resulted to millions of stolen credit cards. The above violation is under the Sherman Act.
A monopolistic market structure is one that has many producers and they sell products that are differentiated to those of other sellers. Competition in this case is imperfect. Oligopolistic market structure on the other hand is a market that is controlled by few firms that jointly are in control of majority of the market share. Such market structures involve firms that have market power and as such are price makers. In the real world, it is difficult to obtain a market that is perfectly competitive and as such monopolies and oligopolies play are always in existence. Even though this is so, monopoly pricing brings about a deadweight loss to the society. Having monopolies and oligopolies is not always a bad thing as in cases like flying, it would be of essence to have major airlines that would provide the service effectively i.e. would make it possible for individual to fly over greater distance. This is a situation or case that requires a lot of finances for operations and having an oligopolistic market would be of essence to ensure that services are provided effectively.

Reference

Release, P. (2014). After Blocking Apple Pay, Schubert Firm Launches Antitrust Investigation into CVS and Rite Aid Pharmacies.