UK food shoppers, flight buyers, music lovers: are you paying more than you should?
Why do consumers sometimes pay up to 30% more for goods they buy in the ‘local’ versions of supermarkets - and what are those supermarket majors doing to ensure that all shoppers, including those on lower incomes, benefit from affordable and competitive prices?
Meeting details
What are airlines doing to ensure that travellers see the benefits of dynamic pricing, as well as seeing what their flight will really cost and being able to properly compare it and shop around?
UK music-lovers typically have very few choices when it comes to buying tickets for gigs – but the same applies to the musicians looking for venues and promoters to put them on.
The live music promotion scene is dominated by a few players that can control access to venues as well as to the ticketing and pricing structures offered to fans. But the biggest “entertainment company”, Live Nation – which also controls the biggest UK ticketer, Ticketmaster – stands out as a different order of size from its nearest competitor even in this narrow field.
The Competition and Markets Authority has been tasked by Government with adapting its approach to help drive the national economic growth mission. But what is it doing to keep markets competitive, and make the increasing use of dynamic pricing fair to consumers?
Rt Hon Liam Byrne, Chair of the BTC, said: “Week after week, families tell us the same story: prices keep rising—on food, on flights, on fun—and no one can quite explain why. That’s why our Committee is digging deeper. We want to know: are regulators doing enough to stop markets from malfunctioning? Are dominant firms using their power to squeeze consumers and shut out competition? And are shoppers, travellers and music lovers paying a fair price—or simply paying through the nose?
“We built markets to serve the public—not to fleece them. So we need to ask: are regulators defending the powerless, or just watching the powerful take more than their share?”