Don't shoot the messenger, read first.
From the legal eagles at Truth on the Market, July 21:
For a potential entrepreneur, just how much time it will take to compete, and the barrier to entry that time represents, will vary greatly depending on the market he or she wishes to enter. A would-be competitor to the likes of Subway, for example, might not find the time needed to open a sandwich shop to be a substantial hurdle. Even where it does take a long time to bring a product to market, it may be possible to accelerate the timeline if the potential profits are sufficiently high.
As Steven Salop notes in a recent paper, however, there may be cases where long periods of production time are intrinsic to a product:
If entry takes a long time, then the fear of entry may not provide a substantial constraint on conduct. The firm can enjoy higher prices and profits until the entry occurs. Even if a strong entrant into the 12-year-old scotch market begins the entry process immediately upon announcement of the merger of its rivals, it will not be able to constrain prices for a long time. [emphasis added]
Salop’s point relates to the supply-side substitutability of Scotch whisky (sic — Scotch whisky is spelt without an “e”). That is, to borrow from the European Commission’s definition, whether “suppliers are able to switch production to the relevant products and market them in the short term.” Scotch is aged in wooden barrels for a number of years (at least three, but often longer) before being bottled and sold, and the value of Scotch usually increases with age.
Due to this protracted manufacturing process, Salop argues, an entrant cannot compete with an incumbent dominant firm for however many years it would take to age the Scotch; they cannot produce the relevant product in the short term, no matter how high the profits collected by a monopolist are, and hence no matter how strong the incentive to enter the market. If I wanted to sell 12-year-old Scotch, to use Salop’s example, it would take me 12 years to enter the market. In the meantime, a dominant firm could extract monopoly rents, leading to higher prices for consumers.
But can a whisky producer “enjoy higher prices and profits until … entry occurs”? A dominant firm in the 12-year-old Scotch market will not necessarily be immune to competition for the entire 12-year period it would take to produce a Scotch of the same vintage. There are various ways, both on the demand and supply side, that pressure could be brought to bear on a monopolist in the Scotch market.
One way could be to bring whiskies that are being matured for longer-maturity bottles (like 16- or 18-year-old Scotches) into service at the 12-year maturity point, shifting this supply to a market in which profits are now relatively higher.
Alternatively, distilleries may try to produce whiskies that resemble 12-year old whiskies in flavor with younger batches. A 2013 article from The Scotsman discusses this possibility in relation to major Scottish whisky brand Macallan’s decision to switch to selling exclusively No-Age Statement (NAS — they do not bear an age on the bottle) whiskies:
Experts explained that, for example, nine and 11-year-old whiskies—not yet ready for release under the ten and 12-year brands—could now be blended together to produce the “entry-level” Gold whisky immediately.
An aged Scotch cannot contain any whisky younger than the age stated on the bottle, but an NAS alternative can contain anything over three years (though older whiskies are often used to capture a flavor more akin to a 12-year dram)....
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