It's normal competitive behavior - you're supposed to try and take market share from your competitors (and prevent them from taking it back from you). What should they say - that they're making sure not to take up too much space in the market, so everyone has a chance?
They're not lobbying local governments to put regulations in place that prevent other toy stores from opening, they're just trying to sell as many toys as they can, which is the point of their business. Their competitors are most assuredly trying to do the same at TRU's expense. That's what competition is.
Not necessarily. Anticompetitive behavior is hard to define, but I like this quote from Ben Thompson:
> What makes this distinction particularly challenging is that the question as to what is anticompetitive and what is simply good business changes as a business scales. A small business can generally be as anticompetitive as it wants to be, while a much larger business is much more constrained in how anticompetitively it can act.
Basically, you only cross the line between competitive and anticompetitive when you're approaching total victory, to a point of almost no return.
> A small business can generally be as anticompetitive as it wants to be...
The whole point of anticompetitive behavior is to reduce competition in the market. A "small business" generally doesn't have the ability to do this at any meaningful level even if it engages in behavior that would reduce competition if it was instead a huge business.
For instance, if a small business decides to sell some products at a loss ("dumping"), it won't meaningfully drive competitors out of the market. Therefore it would be silly to characterize this behavior as anticompetitive.
Put simply, you are anticompetitive when you actually have the ability to meaningfully reduce competition in the market. If you go down the list of behaviors that are typically considered anticompetitive, almost none of them would be employed by small businesses in an effort to reduce competition anyway.
It's not meaningless because the behavior itself didn't change, only the scale. You can have one business that never changes their business strategy, but once they get too big suddenly they are anticompetitive without having actually changed their behavior.
This either says that either one believes behavior itself can never be anti-competitive (since it relies on scale as input), or that one must always take into account scale in the discussion. In which case, a lot of anticompetitive discussions need to add in a lot more qualifying context.
This is just MBA speak. They wanted to build a new format that would take a while for the competitor to figure out how to copy. And they wanted that new format to help them gain market share against a key competitor.
What actually is a "pop-up store"?
Is it a store that is only intended to have a short-lifespan?
If so are they fraudulently misrepresenting growth coming into an IPO?
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[ 5.9 ms ] story [ 37.3 ms ] threadIs this really something you normally just come out and say as one of your goals? Isn't this anticompetitive behavior?
They're not lobbying local governments to put regulations in place that prevent other toy stores from opening, they're just trying to sell as many toys as they can, which is the point of their business. Their competitors are most assuredly trying to do the same at TRU's expense. That's what competition is.
> What makes this distinction particularly challenging is that the question as to what is anticompetitive and what is simply good business changes as a business scales. A small business can generally be as anticompetitive as it wants to be, while a much larger business is much more constrained in how anticompetitively it can act.
Basically, you only cross the line between competitive and anticompetitive when you're approaching total victory, to a point of almost no return.
> A small business can generally be as anticompetitive as it wants to be...
The whole point of anticompetitive behavior is to reduce competition in the market. A "small business" generally doesn't have the ability to do this at any meaningful level even if it engages in behavior that would reduce competition if it was instead a huge business.
For instance, if a small business decides to sell some products at a loss ("dumping"), it won't meaningfully drive competitors out of the market. Therefore it would be silly to characterize this behavior as anticompetitive.
Put simply, you are anticompetitive when you actually have the ability to meaningfully reduce competition in the market. If you go down the list of behaviors that are typically considered anticompetitive, almost none of them would be employed by small businesses in an effort to reduce competition anyway.
This either says that either one believes behavior itself can never be anti-competitive (since it relies on scale as input), or that one must always take into account scale in the discussion. In which case, a lot of anticompetitive discussions need to add in a lot more qualifying context.