Senior executives were running around in disbelief in a total state of panic! Frantic phone calls were being made & board members were being informed of the major crisis the company was facing that morning ...a crisis unlike anything else in the living memory.
The panic at the headquarters was not so much because of the social media backlash over Worthwool's Anzac Day promotion! Nobody was bothered about the fact that most customers had found the use of ANZAC DAY in its centenary to unashamedly promote Worthwool upsetting & taken to social media to let the supermarket know that enough was enough! There was no time for any of that!
The executive were panicking at the cold realisation that that morning it appeared Worthwools, despite its longstanding claims & obvious market power , did not after all dominate everything in Australia & the lives of its customers!
Could that really be true?.... senior executives murmured to their colleagues in disbelief as they wiped the sweat from their foreheads! "Damn it! Don't we own Australia? We sell just about everything anyone would wanna buy in Australia!
Wasn't Australia in fact a subsidiary of Worthwool's? It sure felt like it!...up to that morning!
At the very least the market domination of Small W, Worthwools supermarkets, Murphy Dan's, Buyezy, Dux Tom, SWB, Musters Hardware & HLA Hotel....and not to mention petrol stations warranted that?
The self doubt was fast creeping in the minds of senior executives that morning! Where had things gone wrong to cause this unforeseen crisis with the Anzac Day promotion? The management had done everything they could to learn from the likes of Martwal in order to take the lion market share of the alcohol, cigarettes, gambling, petrol & grocery sectors in Australia & were working aggressively to dominate hardware, pharmacy, lottery/news agencies & insurance too!
Admittedly Musters Hardware was still a money bleeding disaster & the helpful noNews journalists' campaign of misinformation to assist Worthwools to rip pharmacy owners apart had yet to bear fruit!
Nevertheless, according to the latest Dolittle's Global Retailing Powers 2015, whilst most market dominant retailers drew their total revenue from multiple countries of up to 20, Worthwools Management had amazingly achieved the vast bulk of their $55b annual revenue from the tiny market of around 25m people in Australia & New Zealand!
Sure! this huge market dominance had deserved national accolades & received encouragement from the No Small Competition Commission. But more crucially, it deserved recognition in the form of eg further easing of retail & alcohol trading hours! Nothing wrong with any of that! No Small Competition Commission Chair had only recently had stated "there's nothing wrong with market power, but market abuse must not be permitted". The Anzac Day PR disaster didn't count as lazy complacent abuse of market power did it?
So surely Worthwools market power meant it could tweak with sacred historic & iconic events such as Anzac Day!....after all, Woorthwools saved its customers money and according to No Small Competition Commission Chair that was all that counted! Not to mention their home brand Anzac Day biscuits were after all a top seller! Some executives cried out in protest!
But then the real heavy cold sweat set in & the real panic took over as someone uttered the unmentionable!
The executives & board members crawled under their seats shaking with fear!
No please! Make the thought go away! Not FarmersWes! Pleeeaaase! Don't tell us the social media backlash against us was gonna make Farmerswes more dominant that Worthwools!...They cried incredulously!
Several ambulance siren were heard approaching the headquarters at this stage as reports of acute coronary incidents could clearly be heard in the corridors!
After all, FarmerWes' Nubbings was continuing to embarrass Musters' executives by comprehensively destroying the livelihood of the vast majority of small harware store owners at a much more devastating pace than Musters had managed up to then!
Farmerswes owned Koles, Lo Gos, Kart M, Tegart, Work Office, Choice 1st, Land Liq, Cellar Vintage and also dominated the retail petrol market, as well as insurance businesses and various mining, chemical & other industrial operations! Was the secret to literally owning Australia in the brave new world of retailing domination by duopolies in mining, industrial operations & not simply gambling, alcohol, petrol & cigarettes as Worthwools executives had proudly thought? Had the board & management failed in their strategy to dominate Australia?
Thankfully by mid morning the marketing & PR people put the senior management & board members minds at ease!
The backlash was simply that! A manageable social media backlash!
Nothing that the company's powerful PR machine armed with large advertising money couldn't quickly neutralise! After all, Worthwools advertising money fed a lot of mouths in the print media! A few quick phone calls to the ever obliging & grateful journalists who wrote as they were told by their advertising masters would surely wipe out the story from the front pages in no time. The public could instead be reminded to focus on more important issues at hand, like all those greedy small business people who were continuing to resist attempts to overwhelm them & were costing themselves grief, consumers money & Worthwools time in the process!
Meanwhile the Marketing Department could probably come up with yet another "Shop $100s of dollars with us & collect cheap quality kids football cards" promotion to appease or distract those mums & dads who were still angry about the Anzac promotion! (not to mention those promos always helped the bottom line too)
The board & executives were relieved. They were assured that Worthwools would continue to overwhelmingly dominate every aspect of consumers' lives in Australia & despite fierce competition with Farmerswes, 80 cents in a dollar in total retail spend was still plenty for a duopoly to fight over!
So the board instructed the senior executive management to immediately return back to work! Car insurance, banking, pharmacy, lotteries, and who knows even taxi services were still unfinished businesses & up for possible grab!
Ooh by the way, executives emailed the sales department managers to remind customers that unlike some unnamed competitors' bread, Worthwools Anzac biscuits were freshly baked on site & not frozen & brought to Australia from elsewhere! Surely that should count towards speedy redemption!
Meanwhile, ANZAC DAY retains its respectful iconic status for the us, the customers.
Yes, those of us who are overwhelmed with the constant suffocating presence of the retailing duopoly in our lives, as well as our so called leaders who are unwilling to address the market power that is suffocating competition instead of enhancing it, the likes of our politicians, union officials, newspaper columnists & in awe Competition Policy intellectuals:
"Lest we forget the spirit of ANZAC 1915-2015"
Disclaimer to all those lawyers looking for some extra cash:
The above blog post is an attempt at social satire, and obviously not a very good one at that. All names & events described above are fictional & any resemblance to any real businesses or events are purely coincidental. Most critically, like you, I am a also regular albeit reluctant duopoly customer! By the time you sue me, I will have most probably spent my money at one of their retail outlets & will be penniless! So don't bother & get a sense of humour instead!
