Monopoly at Work — the Illusion of Choice at Grocery Stores

When I first moved to North America from China, I remember stepping into Safeway for the first time. I was awed by the copiousness — there are 20+ different kinds of candy bars, a shelf full of various brands of chips just to name a few. There were so many options that it’s daunting! To this date, I don’t think I am recovered from the grocery shopping anxiety.

But if you take a look at this infographic below, your options are rather limited.

This reminds me of the passage from Zero to One:

Tolstoy opens Anna Karenina by observing: “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Business is the opposite. All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition.

Here is a list of the companies with the name, founding year and the industry from above graph:

• Mars, Inc., 1911, food processing
• Unilever, 1929, Consumer goods
• Johnson & Johnson, 1886, Medical equipment Pharmaceutical
• Procter & Gamble, 1837, Consumer goods
• Nestlé, 1866, Food processing
• Kraft, 1903, Food processing
• Coca-Cola, 1886, Beverages
• PepsiCo, 1919, Beverages
• General Mills, 1866, Food processing
• Kellogg’s, 1906, Food processing

It looks like the period between 1837–1929 is the golden era for consumer goods. It’s shocking that the youngest company in this list (Unilever) was founded almost 86 years ago!

In the world of rampant change, it’s interesting to see how these companies endured such a long time. After all, that candy bar is going to outlast your latest SoLoMo app that allows teens to sext one another…