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Differentiating Between Market Structures

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Differentiating Between Market Structures
Anne Giorno
ECO/365 Principles of Microeconomics
February 16, 2015
Jong Yi

Differentiating Between Market Structures
The competitive balance between firms is unique in every industry. Some industries are dominated by a single company, while others have thousands of small businesses competing for market share. The composition of competitive firms is known as the market structure. The grocery industry is an example of monopolistic competition. This type of market structure can have a positive and a negative impact on the structures competitive strategies.
Monopolistic Competition
Monopolistic competition occurs when there are many different firms competing for market share over similar products. There are generally low barriers to entry, which means it is easy for a small company to become a competitor in the market. All of the companies in this system sell similar products and must make a string effort towards product differentiation. Products and services are considered to have a high elasticity of demand; meaning a consumer has many comparable alternatives to choose from. If a firm decides to raise prices, a consumer in a monopolistic competition market should find it easy to find a similar alternative in their local area (Corcelli 2006). This differs from monopolies and oligopolies. A monopoly market is only one single seller. An oligopoly market is dominated by a small number of larger companies selling slightly different goods. Both a monopoly and oligopoly market structures only have a small number of competitors and still perform product differentiation, but they rarely compete on prices. It is also different form perfect competition, because it lacks a high level of efficiency though they share the characteristic that in the long-run equilibrium, organizations earn zero economic profits.
The

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