Files
Abstract
For many years now, relationships between retailers and manufacturers have always been tense and some of the strategies denounced as abusive. This raises doubts regarding the effectiveness of numerous laws (Royer, Raffarin, Galland) supposed to restrain the increasing power of retailers. Before passing laws, an accurate analysis of the relationships between manufacturers and retailers seems to be necessary. The first part of this paper recalls the basis of retailers' buying power emphasizing merger waves and private labels invasion. The second part looks at the impact of that buying power with respect to the contracts between the upstream firms and the downstream ones and tackles the efficiency of the laws passed to contain retailers' power.