Consumer-facing remedies

Competition authorities, consumer protection authorities and sectoral regulators are increasingly grappling with competition problems stemming from demand-side, rather than supply-side, features of markets.

In these markets, structural concerns, such as market concentration or barriers to entry, do not fully explain observed competition problems, including high prices or low service quality. Demand-side factors, such as search and switching costs and behavioural biases, can sometimes play a significant role.

Agencies have implemented a variety of measures aimed at tackling these market failures in the course of market studies and consumer protection cases. These remedies have been targeted:

at informing customers about the options available.
developing tools such as price comparison websites to help customers make accurate comparisons,
removing switching impediments, or
actively prompting customers to act to get a better deal.

In June 2018, the OECD held a roundtable discussion that focused on the practical challenges of considering non-price effects, namely: identifying circumstances in which demand-side competition problems occur, determining when consumer-focused measures can be used (e.g. market studies, antitrust cases, ancillary measures in merger consent decisions), and designing as well as testing these measures.

OECD Handbook on Competition Policy in the Digital Age

SESSION INFORMATION

INVITED SPEAKERS

Amelia FLETCHER [Bio] ‌
Professor of Competition Policy, University of East Anglia