Problems With Staples And Office Depot Merger

As the firm manager for staples, I believe that there are a lot of problems with Staples and Office Depot merging together. The problems that Staples is facing range from Profits, Supply and Demand to price changes. I will talk about a lot of topics, but these three will be the main focus. Fixing those three topics are the most important, because getting a solution will make it possible for Office Depot and Staples to merge together. The consequences we are facing are that the merge will end the competitive battle between Office Depot and Staples, and leave staples to have control of the whole office supply market. Another consequence is that people believe we will have the opportunity to raise prices whenever we like, which would change
Resources will be available, but prices will go up and that will make money scarce for consumers to spend. Consumers will not want to spend ten to twenty dollars on a simple office supply and that will factor into all of their decision making and process. People will not be talking about scarce resources anymore, as they will be talking about scarce income. Economics will change with the merge, and it will affect producers and consumers. This will look bad on Staples because profits will be problematic for consumers, and beneficial for producers. Profits become trouble due to the fact that Staples and Office Depot should be able to make a lot due to the fact that they will be able to control the whole office supply economy. This benefits them, as “Staples prices and profit margins are lowest in markets where it competes with Office Depot” (Page 2) and could make or break the economy depending on how Staples and Office Depot use it. If they use the profits to continue to make more money, office supplies will become too expensive and turn into a luxury. This will be a problem as it will change office supplies from a inferior good to a normal good. and hurt the consumers. Consumers will have less money, and this could hurt the whole market equilibrium. It would be as problematic as the stock market crashing, because consumers depend on office supplies for school and work.
Consumers would not be able to negotiate with producers anymore, because the producers would have all the leverage. The consumers would have to waste more money to go somewhere else, which leads to a loss in time and money. Producers could still lower prices, but it would be up to them. Consumer-Consumer rivalry would be able to survive, but it would result in office supplies increasing into an insane price. This would then lead to office supplies becoming an luxury good. Producer-Producer rivalry would not be able to exist, because Office Depot and Staples are already the two biggest supply stores. OfficeMax is third but would not be able to compete with the merge of Office Depot and Staples. Markets are an essential part to any