Fuelling Competition Across Petrol Retail Brands: A Discussion Paper on the Role of Marketing as Evidence of Anti-competitive Collusion

In 2023, the Georgian Competition and Consumer Agency (GCCA) sanctioned five major petrol brands for fixing retail prices of automobile fuel. The GCCA rejected arguments about the primary nature of non-price competition in the fuel automobile retail, observing that several aspects of the latter (e.g. loyalty programs) were mostly homogenous among competing brands. This observation gives rise to the question – in markets with inherent price parallelism, what aspects of non-price competition might the enforcers consider as evidence of anti-competitive collusion? This discussion paper tries to provide an answer by exploring brands’ marketing strategies as an aspect of non-price competition and evaluating circumstances which could indicate the existence of anti-competitive/collusive market behaviour.