Theoretically any company could “take over” almost any market by offering their services at a lower price than any of the competition. And sometimes economic theorists like to calculate just how long it is going to be until it happens in various industries. Usually those calculations are just exercises with a financial calculator or spreadsheet – they don’t tend to reflect much in the real world.
Specifically, I remember when Sears bought Merrill Lynch Real Estate and then Merrill Lynch went on a buying spree of real estate companies – one large local firm they purchased was Tom Fannin Realty (this was in the early 80’s). The buzz coming down the pike at that time was that only the VERY largest firms and small (really efficient boutique type operations) would survive. All of the “regular” real estate companies were going to go out of business. The big-money-wall-street-people were going to dominate the real estate industry.
As luck would have it, just doing number crunching (completely skipping the whole “people thing”) made almost everything they (along with all the robot reporters) predicted to be pretty much complete crap. A few short years later Sears was selling (after enormous losses) Merrill Lynch Realty and surprise surprise – the real estate business rolled on, almost like it had all along.
In any industry there are those consumers who believe that “the lowest price” is the most important issue. They constitute about 15% of the home selling public. About 5% fall into the status conscious arena and actually want to pay a higher price. The vast majority of the public (80%) are more “Value Shoppers”. Don’t confuse that for wanting the lowest price all the time. They want the “best deal” – which may or may not be the lowest price. Show them that something is a “good deal” and it doesn’t have to be the lowest price.
One of the more idiotic assumptions made by the howler monkeys at the FTC and the DOJ in their pursuit of “lower commissions for the public” is that “commissions should have come down because of the internet”. The mere fact that Read more
