Superpoly: monopoly in the twenty-first century

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose that the traditional definition of monopoly needs to be extended to accommodate twenty‐first century marketplaces. The concept of superpoly is defined and discussed. Superpoly is a development of the concept of monopoly to accommodate market structures in networked and knowledge‐intensive economies characterised by a high underlying level of consumer choice.Design/methodology/approach – A definition of superpoly is offered and each of the seven market spaces in superpoly are defined and illustrated with reference to Tesco, the UK supermarket chain. A discussion section explores the issues that arise from over‐dominance of one business in each of these spaces in terms of the positives (typically emphasised by the dominant business) and the negatives (typically emphasised by other stakeholders).Findings – In order to achieve a state of superpoly, businesses focus on seven interrelated market spaces, including respectively: commercial space, channel space, co...