Market Structure and Industry Analysis: A Comparative Report

This report provides an analysis of different market structures and their impact on various industries. It begins by defining and differentiating between perfect competition, monopolistic competition, oligopoly, and monopoly, and highlights the key characteristics of each. The report then applies these concepts to real-world examples, analyzing the market structure of industries such as wheat, fast food, smartphones, and mail delivery. It explores how factors like the number of sellers, product differentiation, barriers to entry, and market power influence the competitiveness and profitability of firms within each market structure. The report also examines the implications of these market structures for consumers and the overall economy, providing a comprehensive understanding of market dynamics. The report is supported by relevant references to academic literature on market structures and industrial organization.

Running head: MARKET STRUCTURE
Market Structure
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Table of Contents
Answer.............................................................................................................................................2
Reference.........................................................................................................................................4

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Answer
Table 1: Market structure of industries
Most to least
competitive
Market Structure Industries
0
10
Perfect Competition Raw wheat, taxi in a big city
Monopolistic Competition Fast food burgers
Oligopoly Smartphones
Monopoly Mail delivery, A mall Santa photo
service during the Christmas
Source: (Created by the Author)
Table 1 shows the market structure of the industries as per their competitiveness. Perfect
competition is the most competitive and monopoly is the least competitive. Wheat and taxi
industries belongs to perfectly competitive market structure because the product of the industry
is not unique and the number of sellers and buyers are numerous in the market due to which none
of the buyers or sellers have market power and there is no barriers to entry and exit in the said
industries (Kolmar & Hoffmann, 2018). Fast food burger industry belongs to monopolistic
competition because there are numerous buyers and sellers and along with that, each firms offer
different kind of burgers. It means that there exists product differentiation and hence the industry
is monopolistically competitive. Additionally, smartphone industry is oligopolistic in nature as
there are few firms operate in the industry. The industry has high fixed cost, the firms have
significant amount of market power, and thus there are entry and exit barriers. The firms in the
industry earns super normal profit and can collude to earn higher profit margins. Finally, mail

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delivery and mall providing Santa photo service are operating in monopoly market structure
because in both the cases there are single firms providing unique service to numerous buyers
(Waldman & Jensen, 2016). Thus, the firms have significant amount of market power and earn
super normal by charging high price. In addition that, there are extreme restrictive to entry and
exit. Therefore, from the discussion it is clear that which industry belongs to which markets
structure.

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Reference
Kolmar, M., & Hoffmann, M. (2018). A Second Look at Firm Behavior Under Perfect
Competition. In Workbook for Principles of Microeconomics (pp. 105-132). Springer,
Cham.
Waldman, D. E., & Jensen, E. J. (2016). Industrial organization: theory and practice. Routledge.