The development course of market dominance

For the definition of market dominance, some scholars think that it refers to "a state of enterprises or enterprise joint organizations, and enterprises or enterprise joint organizations with this state have the control ability to determine the output, price and sales of products in related product markets, regional markets and time markets". Some scholars believe that market dominance usually refers to "a market position in which an enterprise or enterprise group can control market competition or is not bound by market competition". This is defined from the perspective of the impact on competition. In the Mechelin case of 1983, the European Court of Justice held that market dominance refers to "the position of economic ability enjoyed by an enterprise, which enables the enterprise to take significant independent actions, and the responses of its competitors, customers and final consumers will not hinder the maintenance of effective competition in the relevant market". In the case of 1956 DuPont, the Supreme Court of the United States defined monopoly power as "the power of enterprises to control prices or exclude competition".

China's Anti-monopoly Law also draws lessons from the German word "market dominance", which is defined as follows in Article 17: "It refers to a market position in which an operator can control the price, quantity or other trading conditions of goods in the relevant market, or can hinder or affect the ability of other operators to enter the relevant market." This definition takes two conditions that constitute market dominance as selective conditions: first, the position of enterprises in the market, that is, they can control the price, quantity or other trading conditions of commodities; The second is the impact on competition, that is, it can hinder and influence other operators to enter the relevant market.

Obviously, the two conditions define the connotation of market dominance from different angles, but they are not complementary but parallel, that is to say, in practice, as long as an enterprise has one of the conditions, it occupies a market dominance. In fact, the conceptual extensions defined by these two conditions are not completely consistent, and the conditions to meet the status conditions of enterprises in the market are mainly monopoly, quasi-monopoly and prominent market position; Meet the conditions that have an impact on competition, including enterprises with monopoly, quasi-monopoly and prominent market position, as well as enterprises with comparative advantages. Because enterprises with comparative advantages will also hinder and affect other enterprises to enter the market. Therefore, in practice, there may be inconsistent judgments on the two conditions, which will affect the consistency and authority of law enforcement. The author believes that the definition of market dominance should at least include the following factors: (1) subject, which can be owned by one enterprise alone or jointly owned by several enterprises. (2) Market dominance is essentially a special market position, which is independent of competition and dominates enterprises. (3) in the form of expression, it is often externalized to control the price and quantity of goods, which hinders and affects the operation of other operators.

To sum up, market dominance refers to the market position in which one or several enterprises can control the trading conditions such as commodity price and quantity in the relevant market, and can hinder and influence other operators to enter.