BUSN6120 Managerial Economics
Instructor: John Blum
August 20, 2014
Introduction The first chapter in Managerial Economics and Business Strategy introduces the class to the fundamentals of managerial economics. Some of the topics that were discussed within the chapter were; the economics of effective management, understanding incentives and markets, recognizing the time value of money, and using marginal analysis. The topic that I found most interesting this week was understanding markets. The power, or bargaining position, of consumers and producers in the market is limited by three sources of rivalry that exist in economic transactions: consumer-producer rivalry, consumer-consumer rivalry and producer-producer rivalry (Baye & Prince, 2014). For this week's topic paper, I will focus on producer-producer rivalry and how it relates to Publix being the most popular grocery store chain in the state of Florida. While Publix and their competitors offer thousands of different products to their customers, this would still be considered as a rivalry between two or more producers.
Discussion Grocery stores have been competing against each other for decades, always trying to one-up each other in order to win over customers. When one supermarket comes out with a sale or advertises their superior customer service, there is always another competitor trying to lure those customers away. Publix is a well established grocery store chain in the state of Florida and has been battling with other retailers, such as Winn-Dixie and Wal-Mart to offer customers quality merchandise, personalized customer service and better prices. With a score of 86 out of 100, the Florida-based supermarket, Publix, tops the group’s list – for the 19th year in a row (Grocery & Retail News, 2013).
