Navigating Natural Monopolies: Market Strategy and Nonmarket Challenges in Radio and Television Audience Measurement Markets

Hillary  Greene; Dennis  Yao

Chapter | Strategy Beyond Markets | 2016

Navigating Natural Monopolies: Market Strategy and Nonmarket Challenges in Radio and Television Audience Measurement Markets

by Hillary Greene and Dennis Yao

Abstract

This paper explores how firms within the audience measurement industry, specifically its radio and television markets, have navigated myriad market and nonmarket challenges. The market strategies and the nonmarket forces that constrain those strategies are largely defined by two features: the delineation of its geographic markets by political boundaries and markets that have natural monopoly characteristics. While the pre-monopoly stage or periods of competition may be comparatively short lived, they are still telling. Monopolists undertake market strategies designed to ensure that they are not supplanted and nonmarket actions geared to avoiding undesirable constraints and reputational damage. Depending on their legal and regulatory environment, customers of the measurement services have used both market and nonmarket actions to mitigate the market power of the audience measurement firms. This paper focuses primarily on the U.S. radio and television audience measurement markets that Arbitron and Nielsen, respectively, have dominated for decades. Non-U.S. markets, which frequently feature America’s foremost firms, illustrate alternatives to America’s largely laissez-faire approach.

Keywords: Measurement and Metrics; Marketing Strategy; Consumer Behavior; Monopoly; Television Entertainment; Public Opinion; Geographic Scope; Media and Broadcasting Industry; United States;

Format: Print

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Citation:

Greene, Hillary, and Dennis Yao. "Navigating Natural Monopolies: Market Strategy and Nonmarket Challenges in Radio and Television Audience Measurement Markets." In Strategy Beyond Markets. Vol. 34, edited by John de Figueiredo, Michael Lenox, Felix Oberholzer-Gee, and Rick Vanden Bergh, 367–411. Advances in Strategic Management. Emerald Group Publishing, 2016.

In this paper we exploit a natural experiment resulting from self-regulation adopted in the ready-to-eat (RTE) breakfast cereal industry. This event induced product repositioning which compressed the relevant product space and increased competition. Through this lens, we assess specific performance impacts associated with the regulation and develop links between product positioning and product brand equity resources. The latter results provide dynamic connections between positioning choices and the value of resources as determined by consumer demand and market competition. As a group, products constrained by regulation perform relatively poorer than unconstrained products, though unconstrained products are also negatively affected by the increased competition caused by the regulation-induced compression. Among other results, we also find that higher brand equity is not always relatively more valuable than lower brand equity when products are forced to reposition.

Article | William & Mary Law Review | March 2019

Antitrust as Speech Control

Hillary Greene and Dennis Yao

Antitrust law, at times, dictates who, when, and about what people can and cannot speak. It would seem then that the First Amendment might have something to say about those constraints. And it does, though perhaps less directly and to a lesser degree than one might expect. This article examines the interface between those regimes recasting antitrust thinking in terms of speech control. Our review of the antitrust-First Amendment legal landscape focuses on the role of speech control. It reveals that while First Amendment issues are explicitly addressed relatively infrequently within antitrust decisions, certain speech (for example, speech that promotes economic efficiency) receives indirect protection as a byproduct of antitrust law. The potential challenges associated with indirect, rather than direct, protection of such speech are then explored. Significantly, such de facto protection does not, however, extend to speech furthering noneconomic values. We then consider some of the pros and cons associated with extending protection to nonefficiency speech values. Central to society’s improved treatment of such speech within antitrust settings is a willingness to recognize the pitfalls of the status quo, to undertake incremental change and to consciously cultivate learning. Perhaps the reality that such interface issues are only likely to worsen given the ever-growing and evolving information economy will get society talking.

Keywords: antitrust law; first amendment; Spoken Communication; Laws and Statutes;

Citation:

Greene, Hillary, and Dennis Yao. "Antitrust as Speech Control." William & Mary Law Review 60, no. 4 (March 2019): 1215–1267. View Details

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Navigating Natural Monopolies: Market Strategy and Nonmarket Challenges in Radio and Television Audience Measurement Markets

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