Turns out a lot of “competition” is the same company under different names, and it shows up in the price data too.
I’m french, there is a very simple way to buy a gpu in France, you buy it from a German online shop 👌
20 years ago, if you wanted a decent guitar in France, you bought it from Thomann.de
It’s not a secret: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupe_LDLC
When I’m buying components I check 17 different stores of which 3 are in the mentioned group.
The article is suggesting that the consolidation of these 5 store-fronts is responsible for the higher prices of components in France compared to Germany. Given how many other (large) retailers there are, including all of the other stores in Europe that ship to France, this surely cannot be a significant contributor to the price difference. You’d need to produce some pretty solid evidence to make that conclusion, and this isn’t it.
fair, and honestly a fair correction on the causal claim, I showed that consolidation exists and that a price gap exists, but I didn’t actually isolate consolidation as THE cause versus other factors (retailer density generally, market size, logistics, etc). Given how many other stores exist like you said, it’s likely one factor among several, not necessarily the main driver. should have been more careful with that framing rather than implying a direct causal link I can’t actually prove with this data. good catch.
You should show this to your LLM: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
Don’t y’all have anti-trust over there?
They call it le anti-trust
