The town of Caruthersville Missouri has a diversified market structure on the local level. It has some businesses that supply products on a national level and even on the international level. The objective is to find what is presently here and what can be done to improve the business environment in Caruthersville. Lets begin by looking at the types of market structures. A large number of buyers and sellers, ease of entry and exit in the industry, perfect knowledge, and mobility of resources characterize perfect competition market. (Amacher & Pate, 2013, p. 9.1) A market structure that has only one seller of a product with no close substitutes is considered a monopoly. Many firms selling differentiated products with easy entry and exit in the industry are called monopolistic competition. A few firms competing with mutual interdependence in the market is called oligopoly. The structure called oligopoly is sometimes viewed as a shared monopoly. (Amacher & Pate, 2013, p. 11.4) Internet providers would fall into this category; they seem to offer the same service at relatively the same price level. There seems to be obstacles of government regulations and licensing that help to deter new competition from entering the market. The two providers are Mediacom, with cable Internet, and AT&T, with DSL or phone line. Satellite Internet companies say that the signal is weakened in this area and do not recommend its use. The use of these barriers have provided the Internet providers to become very profitable at the expense of its customers, possibly even discouraging some people from using the Internet
