What’s the price of your product? In the past, one would probably assume that by your we mean the product you are selling. With the advent of massive information regarding prospective consumers, we are approaching an era in which your is more likely to stand for the product you are buying.

Firms want to maximize profits, and if they are constrained to charge a single price for every potential consumer, they might leave money on the table. However, if a customer reveals her willingness to pay (the key concept in this chapter), sellers may charge different prices to different people for the same goods or services.

Of the many concerns triggered by the rapid growth of digital commerce and the expansion of the data-based economy, price personalization occupies a prominent yet peculiar position. For many firms, the availability of big data and refined algorithmic tools has opened unprecedented avenues to learn about consumers’ financial and personal standing, market preferences, and transactional behaviour patterns. Building on these insights, firms have (at least to some degree) obtained an ability to make behavioural predictions about the future conduct of their clients, including their interest in a particular assortment of products, responsiveness to certain forms of advertising, and – not least importantly – their willingness to pay a certain price.

Consumers are at the forefront of market uses of AI. There are also myriad consumer uses of AI products. Consumer protection law justifies greater responses where the interactions involve significant risks and relevant consumer vulnerability; both such elements are present in the current and predicted AI uses concerning consumers. Whilst consumer protection law is likely to be able to be sufficiently flexible to adapt to AI, there is a need to recalibrate consumer protection law to AI.

The aims of EU competition law are contested. The mainstream view that competition law prohibits conduct that harms consumer welfare leads to discussion about the proper economic approach to apply. EU competition law has often been applied in ways that address other public policy considerations, presently focusing on promoting digital markets and a green agenda. The procedures to apply competition law must safeguard the fundamental rights of undertakings and the Court of Justice has helped shape the degree of protection as well as the right to a robust judicial review of Commission decisions. Since 2004, national competition authorities have been tasked with applying EU competition law. Cooperation among national authorities and the Commission is facilitated by the European Competition Network and the ECN+ Directive has conferred on each national competition authorities the same enforcement powers that the Commission enjoys. Each national authority focuses on cases that affect its jurisdiction, the Commission retaining responsibility for cross-border infringements. Private enforcement has been facilitated by the EU legislature and a system of collective redress by which consumers secure compensation is emerging slowly in some jurisdictions.

If a firm is a nexus of contracts, then it is just the sum of its counterparties. It follows that when a firm monopolizes a particular market and exploits its power to impose unfavourable terms on a counterparty, the firm necessarily exploits one counterparty for the benefit of another, because the additional profits the firm generates from the unfavourable terms must be paid out eventually to some other counterparty of the firm. One alternative to attacking monopoly power through breakup of large firms or limits on anticompetitive conduct in the marketplace is therefore to prevent any one counterparty of the firm from so dominating firm governance as to be able to induce the firm to oppress other counterparties for its benefit. Creating a balance of power in firm governance, by giving each class of counterparties (i.e., workers, suppliers, investors, and consumers) an equal say over the choice of board members, would eliminate the internal forces that induce firms to exercise monopoly power. But it would not prevent firms from engaging in productive, pie-expanding, behaviour, because such behaviour tends to expand the business that the firm does with all of its counterparties—or at least enables the firm to use a share of the gains to compensate those counterparties that lose out—and therefore benefits them all.

This chapter summarises the argument of the book. It has examined the EU’s competition regime and its application in times of crises. In each of these cases, the relaxation of the rules has been shown not to have assisted in solving the crises, and has exacerbated the effects of some crises. Further, as has been shown, the rules themselves do not provide an insurmountable barrier to the solution of ongoing crises (e.g. those associated with environmental and sustainability concerns). Rather, the problem is the need for competition authorities to provide additional guidance and to work with stakeholders in designing and implementing solutions. The work shows that its main lesson – that the introduction of further monopolisation into markets does not solve crises – has been established.

This chapter introduces the argument of the book. It sets out the problem, namely that in almost every crisis there are calls to relax the competition laws so that business can aid in the resolution of the crisis. This chapter challenges this claim. It does so by arguing that the aim of the competition regime is to increase social wealth, so that it can later be used or redistributed. The Introduction outlines the structure of the work, indicating what will be found in subsequent chapters.

Chapter 3 studies VSS under EU competition rules. While in the debate on competition law and sustainability it is often argued in favour of a larger space for private sustainability initiatives, the chapter studies the possibility of using competition rules to tackle the implications of VSS especially on prices and market access. The chapter focuses on the Commission Guidance on Horizontal Agreements, under which standard-setting in line with procedural requirements is seen as pro-competitive. By employing empirical research on the market impact of VSS and economic literature, the chapter argues that VSS can result in restrictions to competition and it questions whether a hands-off competition treatment of VSS is warranted. This finding is assessed against the current approach for balancing pro- and anti-competitive effects of agreements as applied by the Commission. The chapter then suggests a possible approach under Art. 101 TFEU for a thorough scrutiny of economic and non-economic effects of VSS. Chapter 3 also studies VSS under rules for dominant undertakings and considers whether recognition of VSS at the national level would exclude the application of competition rules.

This chapter considers the role antitrust law can play in safeguarding repair markets and, along with them, the interests of competitors and consumers. While IP law may grants device makers power over their products, antitrust and competition law are designed to impose limits on exclusionary behavior. As a result, they serve as potential bulwarks against tactics that would impede repair. Despite significant doctrinal and policy hurdles to enforcement, antitrust law can help discipline firms that attempt to capture markets for the repair of vehicles, electronics, and appliances that account for hundreds of billions of dollars in annual revenue.

The function of EU competition law is seemingly apparent: to prohibit cartels amongst firms and combat the abuse of positions of economic dominance in order to ensure effective competition and, eventually, to maximise consumer welfare. What is less apparent are the more covert socio-economic ordering effects of this externally imposed legal system on institutions within EU Member States that may historically/culturally have organised economic sectors upon the basis of social logics that do not necessarily accord with the centrality of competition and its accompanying logics as a principle of social organisation. This may apply in particular to economic sectors that have historically been organised to serve producerist objectives or interests (an orientation of the state on the supply side of a market). A (economic) consumerist orientation is, by contrast, focussed on purposive rights and interests on the demand side of the market-in particular, primarily as an interest in competitive prices and choice for consumers. This chapter discusses this potential clash of organisational logics by reviewing how the structure and application of EU competition law may tilt EU Member States from producerist towards consumerist socio-economic orientations. It shall do so upon the basis of a critical reflection of attempts by the European Commission to “liberate” the liberal professions and more recent examples in The Netherlands that demonstrate how EU competition law may install a logic of consumer welfare as a primary principle of social organisation whenever firms co-operate to achieve public interest objectives.

This chapter explores the interface between competition and consumer policies, law and institutions as it is emerging in ASEAN. It analyses the reasons for the traditional separation of these two fields, both generally and ASEAN in particular, and then explains the case for an integrated approach to policymaking and a coordinated approach to institutional design, pointing to international examples of such approaches. The chapter considers the evidence of integration and coordination in ASEAN to date, and considers reasons for the functionally silo-ed approach that has been exhibited in most member states thus far. It argues that increased recognition of the positive interdependencies between competition and consumer policies should be a key element of ASEAN’s future development, consistent with theories of networked governance, trading up and contextualised transplantation.