For companies that rely on price discounting as a sales and marketing tool, navigating antitrust risk can be difficult. Lower prices always benefit customers in the short run, but economic theory creates room for plaintiffs to argue that a subset of discounting practices have long-run anticompetitive effects. While the traditional discount specter is predatory pricing, a range of conditional pricing practices such as loyalty and bundled discounts have received increased antitrust scrutiny. Both FTC and DOJ recently have signaled an interest in examining the competitive impact of conditional discounts.

Originally published in Bloomberg BNA's Antitrust & Trade Regulation Report™ - June 10, 2016.