Mažmeninės prekybos koncentracija- konkurencijos ribojimo veiksnys

Abstract

The process of concentration of the retail market in Lithuania brings a visible benefits for the customers, such as broad assortment of the products with relatively low price. At the same time small retail outlets are facing high competition from big supermarket chains, which are constantly increasing the number of their outlets and highly influencing the market price level and the total business enviroment. They have considerable competitive advantiges, compared with small ones, making big orders and getting special price discounts from suppliers. This gives possibility to offer more attractive price for the end consumer. At the same time wholesalers are facing increasing competition from supermarket chains, operating big volumes of specific products and buying them directly from manufactures. Like wholesalers, chains have their own warehouses and perform physical distribution of goods to their outlets. This gives opportunity to use economy of scale, to reduce costs for logistics and have competitive advantages in this field. The article presents the analysis of development trends in the market of the retail trade, focusing on the main directions, where small and medium companies should forward their activities in order to survive. As a target, a long run competitive strategy should be developed, which will help the companies to increase their attractiveness for customers and business partners and finally to gain a strong competitive position in the market. The role of the government in this process is presented as well as the total state regulation policy.