Competition Counts is a non-technical overview of how the FTC’s Bureau of Competition protects free enterprise and American consumers.
What if there were only one grocery store in your community? What if you could buy a phone from only one retailer? What if only one dealer in your area sold cars?
Without competition, the grocer may have no incentive to lower prices. The phone shop may have no reason to offer a range of choices. The car dealer may have no motivation to keep its showroom open at convenient hours or offer competitive financing.
Competition in America is about price, selection, and service. It benefits consumers by keeping prices low and the quality and choice of goods and services high. Competition also encourages businesses to offer new and better products.
Competition makes our economy work. By enforcing antitrust laws, the Federal Trade Commission helps to ensure that our markets are open and free. The FTC promotes free and open competition and challenges anticompetitive business practices to make sure that consumers have access to quality goods and services at competitive prices, and that businesses can compete on the merits of their work. The FTC does not choose winners and losers – you, as the consumer, do that. Rather, our job is to make sure that businesses are competing fairly within a set of rules.
Through its Bureaus of Competition and Economics, the FTC puts its antitrust resources to work, especially where consumer interest and spending are high: in matters affecting energy, health care, food, pharmaceuticals, professional services, computer technology and databases, medical devices, and funeral services