20 East Extended Essays 2015
BLEAKLEY, CONNOR
BOLT, ROISIN
CHANDRASEKAR, NEERAJ
The research question I investigated is “To what extent does Call of Duty have a monopoly status in the First Person Shooter market?” I investigated by the collecting of both primary and secondary data.
This essay investigates the question, “What effect will prospective entrant ‘MyRepublic’ have upon producer welfare in Singapore’s oligopolistic mobile service provider market?” through the assessment of the oligopolistic characteristics present in the Singaporean mobile telecommunications markets, and an assessment of the possible effects prospective entrant into the market, MyRepublic, will have upon producer welfare.
In this essay, I shall be answering the question “To what extent does the price of the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) affect the demand for private cars in Singapore?” I shall try to determine the factors affecting demand for private cars while considering the cooling measures implemented by the government in the car market.
In order to evaluate whether Call of Duty met the characteristics of a monopoly, I used a combination of primary and secondary data. I used market data and sales of the COD games, and similar titles, to see how well they sold as compared to their direct competitors. I used interviewed Akshay Maliwal of Playware Studios who has a monopoly status in his market, and sent a received a survey about people’s opinions about video games, and how often they played which games. My survey showed that people overwhelmingly played Call of Duty and were more loyal to it than other close competitors. Market data showed that the sales of Call of Duty were vastly greater than their competitors, and some of the best selling games in the games industry as a whole. I concluded that the game had a Monopoly Status, as it met all the characteristics of a monopoly and outsold every competing game by a large margin.
For primary data, a consumer survey I created was circulated amongst 67 adults with varying educational backgrounds, from high school degrees to Doctorates (Appendix A). Questioning them about their respective mobile service providers, in order to discover brand loyalty. My secondary research included the collection of prices and offers from the telecoms online websites, locally published news articles, along with MyRepublic’s proposal for market entry. I was then able to analyze the research in accordance with the theory and confirm the oligopolistic nature of the mobile service providers in Singapore, and analyze the affect MyRepublic’s entrance will have on the market, and producer welfare. My investigation confirmed that the three providers operate as a strong oligopoly. The high concentration ratio, high barriers to entry, non-price competition, product branding, price rigidity, and interdependency in the Singaporean telecom market, means it displays the typical characteristics of an oligopolistic market. In the short run MyRepublic’s entrance, may cause a fall in total revenue, because of the stolen market shares from incumbent telecoms. However, in the long run it will most likely improve producer welfare, as it will induce innovation through the introduction of price competition, as existing firms attempt to remain competitive within the market. Also if other telecoms are successful in adopting MyRepublic’s low cost model, then this fall in production costs accompanied by an outward shift in demand because of population increase, will see an increase in profits for all telecoms, and hence improve producer welfare.
I used data from the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) annual publications and reports, and also collected primary research in the form of a questionnaire. Additionally, I conducted an interview with a former LTA employee focusing on the reasons behind the implementation of the COE, as well as its impact on the Singaporean economy. This gave me a perspective of the public opinion with regards to car ownership and the governmental policies preventing it. Combining this primary data to economic theory, including market failure, government intervention and price elasticity of demand has allowed me to gauge the extent to which the COE influences demand for cars. My research indicated that the COE affects demand to a great degree for lower and middle-income households. This is because the COE makes up a large portion of their annual income, and also because of restriction to credit. The fact that there is a very good public transport system in Singapore, which acts as a fair substitute for private vehicles, also has a large influence in determining demand for cars. However, my research is inconclusive on the factors that affect demand from higher income households, where the COE is less of a financial barrier.