COMPETITION IN BUSINESS

Press, Volume XCI, Issue 27637, 19 April 1955, Page 12

COMPETITION IN BUSINESS

ELIMINATION MOVES DEPRECATED EFFECT OF SELLER’S MARKET "The Press'* Special Service HAMILTON, April 18. Attempts to eliminate competition in business, rather than to meet it, were deprecated by the president of the Associated Chambers of Commerce (Mr J. Boyd-Clark) today. In his presidential address to the annual conference, Mr Boyd-Clark said that too' often the businessman who proclaimed his belief in competition sought refuge in this method when his own interests were threatened. “All too often when a competitor really acts like a competitior and does something which hurts—cuts a price, sells harder, improves quality, sells a new invention for the price of the old method—it becomes unfair competition, and then the run commences to the Government and trade associations or Chambers of Commerce, to plead for protection. “Some New Zealand manufacturers and traders will accept any form of Government regimentation rather than face competition—they want complete freedom from price control and in addition an exclusive market,” said Mr Boyd-Clark. “Healthy competition is the only answer to reduced prices and costs. In other words, there is often a call to eliminate competition rather than meet it. A lot of this is due to the years of a seller’s . market, not only in goods but also in labour and in farming. “The farmers, so-called the individualists and backbone of the nation, are always calling for unrestricted competition on the goods and supplies needed to run their farms, but they do not want competition in world markets, they do not subscribe to the competitive ideas of more production selling at lower prices creating still greater demand, or to the competitive idea of helping the salesman to find and expand markets. They call it unfair competition when their own producer control meets competition from their counterpart in the United States.”