Blogging about Monopolistic Competition

Monopolistic Competitive Companies

Size:	Small Company	Medium Company	Large Company
Features:
Differentiated products	Lucky Lager co.	Ben & Jerry's Ice cream	Wal-Mart
Control over price	Dollar Store	Co-Op	The Brick
Mass advertising	Local car dealerships	Tim Horton's	MacDonalds
Brand name goods	Joe Fresh (superstore)	Old Navy	Nike
Product Distribution	Kijiji	Amazon	Apple
Other feature ??
Other feature ??

Lucky Lager cans                    

I've tried to keep most company names recognizable. Lucky Lager co, is a much smaller beer company. Like all beer, the product is slightly different but basically the same. Lucky differs from most companies in price and look.
Joe Fresh, which is superstore's clothing line is still a brand name...but on a much smaller scale than the 2 other company's in that row.
Product distribution is one I added. While there are of course still many, many stores that offer goods, the online "store shoppers" are a big market. Those websites are all distributers that are only online and have small shares in a very large market.
I've left 2 rows blank, tell me what you think.

Monopolistic Competition: An imperfect market structure wherin there are a large number of firms, but each firm is relatively small compated to the market. The market allows for many similar products/companies that are not identical. Monopolistic competition market encourages only competitive firms.
-Christian Makowski

Differentiation plays a large role in this type of market structure. The slight differentiation is the only thing separating monopolistic competition from monopoly. The differentiation of products is what determines perhaps a lower price of one good, or a feature that makes a product better, or the materials that make a better quality product. Without this product differentiation, the monopolistic company wins and we pay what they want us to pay; we buy what the want us to buy. All of our consumer power would be gone.

References:

http://www.facebook.com/luckybeer
http://www.concretemoose.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/kijiji-logo1.png

I'm not sure how many of you were in a place that showed U.S. commercials during the Olympics this summer. I was, and this commercial is why I put McDonalds under mass advertisements. This ad was on so many times I can't bare to watch it anymore (though I'll admit the first couple hundred times it was on I enjoyed it).