I was reading this interesting document today about a court ruling in the US where a supreme court ruled that a manufacturer can force a retailer to not sell their products below a certain price value. From what I gathered, basically there was a manufacturer who refused to sell/supply retail stores with its products without some kind if minimum retail price agreement. Basically, companies found that to be illegal/wrong I guess you can say. Apparently, the manufacturer won the case and it was deemed as acceptable. You can read the document here: http://www.supremecourtus.gov/opinions/06pdf/06-480.pdf
I personally think decisions like these will initially make things more expensive for the consumer and creating less bargains to be found. As an example, many times retailers sell items at a loss in order to generate traffic and this would mean a company wouldn’t be able to do that. Imagine a company going out of business too and then trying to sell everything off at a loss just to get rid of it.
I only encountered this situation once before where someone was telling me that he had no choice but to sell a certain product at that high price or else he would risk losing his ability to carry that product line. He was selling sunglasses incase anyone is wondering. I guess if you had to take something positive out of it, I suppose this means retail stores will have to focus on other things such as providing better service compared to others as they won’ be able to attract customers with price or sales gimmicks as that restriction pretty much puts almost everyone in the same playing field.
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