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That's a good point in general, but it is not true of the largest Dutch supermarket chains. The four largest chains (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Aldi, Lidl) are all i
by lucumo 3y ago
That's a good point in general, but it is not true of the largest Dutch supermarket chains.
The four largest chains (Albert Heijn, Jumbo, Aldi, Lidl) are all independent of each other. A bunch of smaller chains have bundled their buying power into Superunie, which in turn is part of EMD. Superunie would end up somewhere in the middle of the top 5 in the Dutch market. EMD has about 10% of the European market. There's really no monopsony here.
- eecc 3y agoRight, so a market composed of 4-5 buyers might not be a monopsony, can we say oligopsony then? Still a non-market condition where severe distortions are likely
- lucumo 3y agoIt's way to simple to look at a number and say "oligopsony". You'd need to look at how the market functions and how actors on it act. In this particular market: players make razor-thin margins (low single digits as mentioned before), and have regular price wars to fight over market share. It seems 5 is enough to keep players from making excessive profits.