A recent example I discovered: Automobile body repair shops. They used to be mostly independent businesses, but sometime recently, a nationwide corporation call

A recent example I discovered: Automobile body repair shops. They used to be mostly independent businesses, but sometime recently, a nationwide corporation called Abra has bought up many independent body shops and turned them into a network. Perhaps the conditions for recognizing when an industry "needs" consolidation aren't that esoteric? Aren't they all issues of scaling? Another example is in refrigerated shipping containers. Even though those are specialty items, prices have been driven down in that area to the point where financing the construction of new stock is becoming an impediment to some companies in remaining price competitive. Larger companies which have manufacturing in-house have a huge advantage in that niche. Nationwide chains can spend less per shop on advertising, but still out-compete small shops in terms of advertising exposure. They're also more convenient for other large companies to make deals with. Is last-mile delivery like auto-body, in that the flow of information among consumers isn't so great, and it takes considerable effort for delivery teams to maintain quality of service even though the margins aren't always so great? (Anecdote: I bought a portable dishwasher from Amazon. The UPS driver dropped the box right on the corner, completely smashing the packing and the bottom tray of the machine. I reported the damage and did the return. I got the replacement item and the UPS driver dropped the box on its corner in exactly the same way! I ended up keeping it, since the 2nd time, the water tightness and the cosmetics from the front weren't compromised, then eventually sold it on Craiglist.)