Regulatory policy and Strategic Assets - Essay Example

in case of retailers the suppliers of the different items sold by the retailers whereas the horizontal integration involves the acquisition of the competitors in order to increase the market share of the firm. (Joyce & Woods, 2001) This line of thinking within retail chains therefore indicate that the increased emphasis on the mergers and acquisitions during 1990s was also more driven by the fact that the firms realized that through these carefully selected strategic assets, these firms can actually achieve more efficiency.

However, during 1980s the focus was on the use of LBO as a mean of acquiring new firms and utilized the power of debt in order to increase the market penetration and firm value. Further, firms also realized that acquiring their suppliers will basically increase their bargaining position and thus will allow them to compete more easily based on the price based factors because retail chain stores can only compete based on the lower prices. Either way, the process of mergers and acquisitions generally increase the market power of the firms and therefore may lead to the further increase in the concentration of some bigger retail chains in the market while driving away smaller or mid sized players from the market.

This is also evident from the fact that large retail chain stores can easily obtain large tracts of lands and can even keep them un-developed just to drive the competition away. One of the most important arguments which can be put forward in this regard is the fact that the barriers to entry in this segment of the business are low. Such low barriers to entry therefore can allow smaller as well as large players to easily enter and exit the market at lowest cost. As such if the retail chains are large supermarkets, they allow them to develop better bargaining position and thus offer better prices to the customers.

Further, the degree of competition in the market