Abstract

The primary determinant of a potential customer's choice to acquire a good or service is its pricing. Retailers must take into account elements like manufacturing and operating expenses, sales targets, and competitive pricing. Even yet, pricing a new product or even an established product line involves more than just numbers. Particularly for e-commerce business owners, the cost of the goods can all too frequently determine success or failure. Price is a major consideration for every business in today's age of "throw-away" products and rivalry in just about every market sector you can think of. For reasons that will potentially involve an e-commerce retailer setting his or her price to maximise profits and to deter competition is always a danger to the essence of healthy competition. The OECD guidelines have specifically passed various pointers in their 2008 guidelines to prevent such a mishap from happening, especially in the competition sector. Manufacturers frequently make an effort to influence the prices that online merchants charge to final customers for their products under vertical price restraints. Price-based restraints can produce efficiency like many other vertical restraints, but they frequently represent one of the most immediate barriers to intra-brand rivalry. The usage of a minimum or fixed RPM in the e-commerce industry is frequently driven by manufacturer worries about free-riding on offline service provision as well as worries about aggressive discounting in online distribution channels that could deter customers. A brand's standing in the market or perceived prestige. In order to safeguard both wholesale price levels and retail price margins, pricing constraints may be used to reduce the effects of swift online price erosion. The concept of price parity in the e-commerce industry, especially to deter competition by barring the market players a healthy chance to sell their products and services, is on the rise in recent times. This paper aims to study the different forms of price parity being practised by e-commerce players and how the statute provides protection and promotion of healthy competition.

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