Who else wants to know about antitrust law?
As a consumer, you may not be aware that antitrust laws affect your life in so many ways. No matter what you do, which will include shopping online, buying food at your local grocery, or downloading something on the internet.
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The antitrust laws promote and foster competition in the marketplace and prevent anticompetitive mergers and business practices from having competitive prices and high-quality goods and services.
Over the years, certain forms of the agreement have become so harmful to consumers and competition that there is a need to prohibit them out rightly. The antitrust laws believe these types of offenses as illegal because they will cause harm to consumers. Here are five types of violations you need to be aware
Price fixing
This is an agreement made by the competitor in an industry to raise, lower, or even stabilize specific product price ranges. Competitors may also regulate other competitive terms that they offer for their goods and services.
Competitors may choose not to agree on competitive terms that may affect financial representations, warranties, shipping fees, and discounts. Under the Sherman act, competitors’ price-fixing is illegal and harmful to competition and consumers.
Bid rigging
This is a coordinated effort by competing bidders that tends to undermine the bidding process. In bidding process, rigging may occur, and bidders may agree on upfront the bid’s winner; therefore, the bidding process may be a formality.
Market or consumer allocation
Businesses may agree not to have competition for consumers within a given market. They will therefore come up with an agreement to allocate or divide sales within a given territory. Additionally, they may assign some consumers to a particular seller.
These acts are illegal per se under the Sherman Act. Therefore, you are discouraged from participating in them.
Group boycotts
A group boycott usually occurs when some competitors agree to engage themselves in some form of concerted conduct. They will decide not to do business with a particular person or business entity, or in other instances, do business on specific agreed-upon terms.
Tying arrangements
This is an arrangement where to buy an item; it is tied to another thing to buy the other object. This arrangement is presumed illegal under antitrust law when traders connect products that are separate and not components of a single product. In some cases, the availability of the tying item will be available once you purchase another item. Businesses that tie products usually use their strength to make the tying items sell and harm competition in the linked product’s market.
It is essential to note that the central tenant of antitrust law is to protect consumers and businesses from competition and not competitors. In a market economy, there will be winners and looser as a result of competition. Some firms will compete aggressively without violating antitrust law. This will means healthy competition. Therefore, avoid unlawful engagements.
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