Meaning & use
market concentration
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Meanings
noununcountablebusinessfinance
The degree to which a small number of companies control most of the sales in a particular market.
Grammar: Uncountable: talk about 'high' or 'low' market concentration, not 'a market concentration'.
Patterns
- high market concentration
- low market concentration
- market concentration in an industry
- increase market concentration
Regulators worry that the merger will lead to high market concentration in the airline industry.
Low market concentration usually means buyers can choose between many competing suppliers.
The report measures market concentration by looking at the combined share of the four largest firms.
noununcountablebusinessfinance
The process by which a market comes to be dominated by fewer and larger firms.
Grammar: Used as an uncountable noun for the trend or process itself, often after verbs like 'lead to' or 'result in'.
Patterns
- lead to market concentration
- result in market concentration
- a trend toward market concentration
Years of takeovers have resulted in steady market concentration in the grocery sector.
Economists debate whether online platforms inevitably cause market concentration.
Common combinations
- high market concentration
- High market concentration can let a few firms set prices.
- market concentration ratio
- The market concentration ratio shows how much of the market the top firms hold.
- reduce market concentration
- New rules aim to reduce market concentration in banking.
- measure market concentration
- Analysts measure market concentration using the share of the leading companies.
- market concentration in an industry
- Market concentration in the telecoms industry has risen sharply.
Synonyms and how they differ
- industry concentration
- Nearly the same meaning, but it stresses the industry as a whole rather than the market for one product.
- consolidation
- Focuses on the process of firms merging into fewer, bigger ones, while market concentration focuses on the resulting control.
Opposites
Word family
- concentrated adjective
- Describing a market controlled by few firms, as in 'a highly concentrated market'.
- concentrate verb
- To bring activity or control into fewer hands, as in 'power has concentrated in a few companies'.
Commonly confused: market concentration or market share?
market concentration vs market share
Market share is one company's portion of total sales; market concentration describes how sales are spread across all companies in the market.
Practice
Which sentence uses 'market concentration' correctly?
Choose one answer.
'Market concentration' is uncountable, so it is described with 'high' or 'low', as in option B. Option A wrongly treats it as a countable noun with 'a', and option D invents an adverb form.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “market concentration”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.