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Competition vs. Monopoly

Decent Essays

1. Analyze the fast food industry from the point of view of perfect competition. Include the concepts of elasticity, utility, costs, and market structure to explain the prices charged by fast food retailers.

Firms within the fast food industry fall under the market structure of perfect competition. Market structure is a classification system for the key traits of a market. The characteristics of perfect competition include: large number of buyers and sellers, easy entry to and exit from the market, homogeneous products, and the firm is the price taker. Many fast food franchises fit all or most of these characteristics.

Competition within the industry as well as market supply and demand conditions set the price of products sold. …show more content…

Monopolies are price makers and the products offered are not sensitive to changes in the market. The demand curve of a monopoly is not elastic, as is such in a perfectly competitive market. The monopolistic demand curve is the same as the curve for the industry since there is only one firm within the industry. This allows the franchise owner to maximize profits by setting the price of tickets and concessions at an amount that creates the most revenue. Consumers will pay the price, if they want to attend a particular sporting event, no matter how outrageous the price. This price setting is allowable, because unlike perfect competition, there are no substitutes. Cities may have two or three teams of different types of sports (i.e. baseball, hockey, football), but few cities have more than one professional team of the same sport.

Sports franchises, although they 're monopolies are not all bad. These teams bring million and millions of dollars in revenue to the city in which they 're located. First of all, jobs are created in the construction of the sports facility. Then there is revenue to the city from taxes, consumer spending at hotels and restaurants, tourist visits and numerous other avenues.

Sports franchises are similar to the fast food industry in the respect that they also have a very high utility value. Fans are pleased when they witness a very competitive, hard fought sporting event, and they are willing to pay to

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