Blackwell Reference Online

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Marketing practices that reduce or discourage competition, typically thought of in terms of antitrust violations. Antitrust: of, relating to, or being legislation against or opposition to trusts or combinations; consisting of laws to protect trade and commerce from unlawful restraints and monopolies or unfair business practices ( Webster's College Dictionary , 1993). Under certain conditions, examples of anti‐competitive practices in marketing, which are considered violations of US antitrust law, include the following: conspiring to monopolize a market by using a size advantage to underprice competitors and drive them from the market (predatory pricing), offering larger business customers lower prices than smaller business customers with whom they compete (discriminatory pricing), and conspiring to monopolize a market through mergers or collusion with competitors. Perhaps the best way to understand the rationale behind antitrust legislation, and why it has evolved as it has, is to place these events in a historical perspective. Essentially, the industrial revolution, and its expanding scope in the late 1800s, led to the initiation of antitrust legislation in the US. As technology expanded and developed, the size and power of certain companies grew tremendously, which led to heightened social and political concern about large business enterprises. The general consensus was that the ... log in or subscribe to read full text