I come from Australia and the economical phenomenon called duopoly is quite common in my country, like we got two big supermarket chains called Woolworths and Coles, two telecommunications giants called Telstra and Optus, two airlines called Qantas and Virgin Australia, and l can give more examples like that. Because of that phenomenon, we are usually stuck with price gauging. For example, the current big issue happened here is price gauging in super markets. They get big profits, however consumers got bitten very much by the surging prices, however, farmers and other product manufacturers are also exploited by them, they are worse off while consumers struggling with inflation.
I read some papers, they said it’s natural to form duopoly in small to middle sized economy like Australia if without reasonable intervention, because of limited market size, it’s easier to become dominant in an industry. There’s a population of around 27 million in Australia, l wanna ask mates from similar population countries, is it the case in your country as well?
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We have a massive duopoly in groceries. The big two have like 90% market share. That’s the biggest gripe people tend to have because that affects pretty much everybody. Imo we have pretty good options in other sectors especially considering the size of our market.
No, not really. Of course, ideologically driven debaters will claim that it’s a duopoly or even a monopoly, just because they don’t like that one or two are the most popular companies in a certain sector. But not liking that people choose something isn’t the same as there being no choice. Our two largest grocery chains are ICA and Coop. ICA being the largest by far and making the most money. But you can choose to go to Coop. Or, in densely populated areas, you can choose to shop at Lidl, Willy’s, Hemköp or CityGross. Yet ICA is still the most popular choice in those areas, despite the alternatives.
There are some natural monopolies though, like transmission services on the grid. I can’t choose who delivered the electricity to me, as there’s only one grid I’m connected to.
Scotland / UK ….. we have had a lot of consolidation, for example there are only 3 mobile phone networks with dozens of virtual network resellers riding on them. Similar with wired broadband. All are guilty of gouging existing customers.
Supermarkets there are 3-5 big chains based in England and two from Germany, it is only the latter that keep the former in check with pricing.
If not duopoly, then certainly oligopoly with high degree of market consolidation (say 3, 4 main players). The most important duopoly here is obviously the political one (KO vs PiS, two most powerful parties, each one being the archnemesis of another side).
One clear duopoly would be the two most popular supermarkets, Biedronka vs Lidl, recently engaging in some intense price wars. Other market areas would be a bit more fragmented, still pretty consolidated though. Maybe except for convenience stores, where Żabka holds a clear monopoly.
In some areas.
Tymbark and Hortex are top 2 juice brands, Milka and Wedel are top 2 chocolate brands.
We also have a “feud” between 2 supermarket chains Biedronka and Lidl where they constantly make advertisements comparing one to another, they fight, some feel like they wanna choose sides and in result both of them gain in popularity at the cost of other supermarkets.
I wouldn’t say a strict duopoly, but an oligopoly is quite common yes.
There’s 3 major supermarket chains in the East of the country and 3 major supermarket chains in the West, there’s essentialy 3 different networks for phone & internet access and so on.
Imho the “self-regulating market” always leads to a duopoly eventually, no matter the size. There will always be one player growing bigger than all others and one other for all the people rejecting this player while those 2 basically dominate the market and eat up the smaller fish. Examples on a global scale: Android vs. iOS, Boeing vs. Airbus, Visa vs. Mastercard, etc.
In portugal we have 2 major supermarkets (most used): “continente” and “pingo doce”. we also have lidl and aldi and a few others but I don’t know many people who use them. As for airlines we have TAP air portugal (the shittest airline yet). As for communications we have several options: MEO, NOS, Vodafone are the most used. NOWO and a few others are used by fewer people.
the thing you described about the supermarket companies making huge profits while the farmers struggle happens all over europe (france, germany, poland, belgium etc), not only portugal.
It’s rather a oligopoly with maybe 3-4 sharing the market.. sometimes with a very dominant part.. like it is within dairy products.. Tine in norway has a marketshare of 77% relating to milk, cheese, youghurts and all those type of products.. Norwegians are immensely loyal to products. Within grocery it’s like 3 big parts. They recently got a fine by the government for cooperation. If you walk into a norwegian grocery.. it’s quite much of “two-choices”. If I needed toothpaste.. it’s solidox or colgate etc.++
In some cases:
Airlines: SAS and Norwegian (+Widerøe, but they only fly smaller routes and cooperate with the two major airlines)
Supermarkets: Not yet. We have three main chains: Coop, NorgesGruppen (Owns Kiwi, Meny, Joker etc) and Reitan (Rema 1000). [The Norwegian authorities are afraid of it becoming a duopoly](https://www.nhh.no/nhh-bulletin/artikkelarkiv/2019/august/vi-kan-fa-duopol-i-dagligvare–eller-dansk-svenske-tilstander/).
Mobile carriers: Yes, sort of. Telenor and Telia are the main large ones, but there are smaller ones which use either of the two big ones as fallback for where they don’t have their own coverage (f.ex. Ice)
Chocolate: Freia and Nidar
Milk: Tine and Q
Ice cream: Sørlandsis and Hennig Olsen
France: Honestly not really. Most markets have a great share of consolidation but I can’t think of one important market with a duopoly. For supermarkets and hypermarkets, there is Leclerc, Super U, Lidl, Carrefour, Auchan, Intermarché and Casino (with derivated brands), each being an important group, and with competition in each town.
What happens in a lot of markets is rather there used to be a single national public company gone private or lost its legal monopoly, but as people are used to it, it still dominates its market by a huge margin. So not a real monopoly, but not far. Like, Orange for telecoms (ex France Télécom), SNCF for trains, EDF for electricity, Engie for the gas, Air France for airplanes (not really dominating anymore since Easyjet & co arrived), etc.
I wouldn’t say it’s common in Germany. We have more than 2 supermarket chains and telecommunication giants. We may not have many airlines but as a much smaller country, we have few domestic flights anyway and lots of other European airlines serve German airports. One area I can think of are drug stores, i.e. stores that sell mainly cosmetic and hygiene products, plus a small selection of food and other stuff. I’d go there to buy shampoo or toothpaste for example. Supermarkets usually sell those products but have a much more limited selection. Anyway, in most of Germany, drug stores are a duopoly of the two chains DM and Rossmann. But regional competitors exist as well as indirect competition by supermarkets and pharmacies (and of course the world wide web). And we have a fake duopoly in electronics stores. By far the biggest electronics chains are Saturn and Media Markt. However, they actually belong to the same company and just act as if they were competitors.
Although it’s outside Europe, I think it adds helpful context to this discussion to mention the territory which is the queen of duopolies: Hong Kong. It has:
* 2 mass-market supermarket chains: Park’n’Shop and Wellcome
* 2 commercial radio broadcasters: Commercial Radio Hong Kong and Metro Radio
* 2 chemists/drugstore chains: Mannings and Watsons
* 2 electricity utilities: China Light & Power and Hong Kong Electric
* 2 major bus companies: Citybus and KMB
I’m sure there are more more examples because I noticed this pattern decades ago, but it’s a long time since I’ve been there.
At handover in 1997, it also had:
* 2 television broadcasters: ATV and TVB
* 2 English-language newspapers: *The South China Morning Post* and *The Standard*
* 2 rail transport companies: KCR and MTR
* 2 passenger airlines: Cathay Pacific and Dragonair (though this was a façade as the former controlled the latter)
* 2 major political camps: pan-democrats and pro-Beijing
These duopolies have since been replaced by monopolies, not competition.
In Ukraine we have a similar number of population, but duopoly isn’t common. We have three mobile operators, shitton internet service providers, three big countrywide supermarket chains + 2-3 local in every region which sometimes are even more popular than the big ones
I don’t know if it’s specifically I duopoly but it is common to see just a few options. For example internet is mostly KPN and Ziggo and some smaller ones.
Can’t think of any real duopoly in Italy, at least on a national level. You may have localised/target duopolies (eg, certain internal flights are covered only by two companies, or a certain area is covered by two supermarket chains), but no on national level.
While one of two parties has been in government since independence, these days it’s practically impossible for a single party government to form. There have only been coalition governments in my lifetime.
Part of that is down to our voting system (PR-STV). While every European democracy has PR of some sort (except the UK, which has it for some elections) the STV part used in Ireland and Malta more naturally leads to coalition governments.
Basically every candidate is ranked in order on the ballot – there are no party lists and there are also strict ratios of voters to representatives baked into the constitution. Every election area has at least 3 seats (except presidential elections).
Yes for banking and insurance. We’ve effectively two pillar banks, AIB and Bank of Ireland. Even smaller operations are subsidiaries of these two such as EBS which is owned by AIB. A third bank is Ptsb which has grown in recent years but remains significantly smaller than the two aforementioned behemoths. Health insurance is also effectively a choice between Laya or state owned VHI.
In other areas however, considering our size, We’ve quite a good amount of competition. However, notwithstanding this, as a high wage economy, the cost of living is quite high here.
Not Europe, but as an honorary 7th state (!) what you are describing is amplified 10x here in New Zealand. Supermarkets are a duopoly with Foodstuff and Progressive Enterprise and currently under investigation by the Commerce Commission (and the pro-market Act Party leader came out arguing against competition and defending the status ago, this tells me he is not truly caring about the market only individual corporations), airline is worse with Air NZ dominant at 90%, telecommunication maybe better with three players rather than two (but yes One NZ and Spark are two giants).
Yeah this made me crazy when I lived there. Coles and Woolies also have the liquor store market cornered. Thank goodness was there was an Aldi nearby too. Better prices. In NSW there was only one 24 hr Coles which thankfully was walking distance from our place.
We have three telecommunications services and multiple supermarket chains (although they are usually foreign brands or subsidiaries of foreign brands) but neither prevented the price gauging.
The only one that I can think of that annoys me a lot here is there’s very poor competition here for household goods. It’s always a choice between 2 of Unilever, Proctor and Gamble or Reckitt and Benckiser. Henkel hardly feature at all and nor do Colgate-Palmolive.
If you take any category, like say laundry products, they are all Unilever (Persil, Surf, Comfort) or P&G (Ariel, Bold, Fairy and Lenor). If you take dishwashing they’re all Reckitt (Finnish) or P&G (Fairy).
For products like deodorants it’s all dominated by a small number of companies and the prices are ridiculous.
Elsewhere in Europe you get products by P&G, Henkel, Unilever and Colgate-Palmolive and smaller brands all competing and the prices are definitely lower. Here it seems to always be two of the 4 or 5 companies and the others seem to just mysteriously not be competing in that segment.
You really notice it when you’re shopping. Those kinds of products are often the ones that really hike the bill.