Advantages and Disadvantages of Competition: Pizza Case Study

Advantages and Disadvantages of Competition: Pizza Case Study
There are now many places on the high street where you can buy, and often take away pizza as well. In the 1990s however this was not a big industry and prices were often expensive, due to lack of competition unlike today, where prices are constantly being pushed down due to more competition.
Competition can have advantages as it offers a more diverse choice for consumers. Having more competitors of the same product type (pizzas) allows the consumer access to a wider range of variety, which helps push innovation in the market as firms have to come up with new ideas in order to attract customers. This competition has led to inventions such as the stuffed crust pizza, which was introduced after market research suggested that this idea would be popular with consumers, and now most pizza firms offer this option. Due to the larger amount of variety, firms are also forced to lower their prices in order to attract as many customers as possible and deter them from going to another firm that offers a similar product instead. This also allows an increase in quality, as certain firms such as Pizza Hut also began to focus on quality of service, wanting to stand out from the other firms in the business. This is a big advantage for consumers as it allows consumers access to not only a cheaper product, but also a higher quality one such as Domino’s Heatwave invention allowing consumers to have hot pizzas at the customers door, to justify the extra price compared to other smaller firms. The large number of firms in the market lead to price competition, which is an advantage for consumers as some prices dropped to as low as £1.
