Explanation
An oligopoly exists when there are small number of producers that exert a significant influence in the market.
Oligopoly's main characteristics are discussed as follows:
- Interdependence
The most important feature of oligopolyis the interdependence in decision-making of the few firms which comprise the industry. This is because when the number of competitors is few, any change in price, output, product etc. by a firm will have a direct effect on the fortune of its rivals, which will then retaliate in changing their own prices, output or products as the case may be.
- Importance of advertising and selling costs
A direct effect of interdependence of oligopolists is that the various firms have to employ variousaggressive and defensive marketing weapons to gain a greater share in the market or to prevent a fall in their market share. For this various firms have to incur a good deal of costs on advertising and on other measures of sales promotion. Therefore, thereis a great importance of advertising and selling costs under conditions of market situation characterised by oligopoly
- Group behaviour
Another important feature of oligopoly is that for the proper solution to the problem of determination of price and output under, it analysis of group behaviour is impor-tant.
- Indeterminateness of demand curve facing an oligopolist
In this question, 'Prices in oligopoly are predicted to fluctuate widely and frequently' is an incorrect statement as producers in oligopoly often try to set up price. Prices fluctuate more frequently in perfect competition.
LO 2, AC 2.2

In some markets, suppliers experience peaks and troughs in demand and so buyers can increase their leverage through developing an understanding of how busy their vendor are at particular time during the year or business cycle and targetting atquieter period. Similarly, if a buyer can develop an understanding of supplier capacity and to what extent have they covered their fixed cost, they may be able to target suppliers when their average costs are likely to be lowest. Vendor's average costs will be higher at low and high capacity utilisation.
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In order to break vicious cycle of blame, procurement will need to use their negotiation and conflict management skills,adopting a collaborative and integrative approach. Your first action should be to establish the facts that led to the situation where the relationship broke down. Most day-to-day relationship between buying organisations and suppliers do not of course involve procurement staff, so you will need to consult with your business partners internally to establish their point of view of where the issue and sources of conflict are. You should also contact the supplier and get their side of the story - this is particularly to when you have previously identified the supplier as critical or otherwise important to your operations. Ideally you will be able to apply principled negotiation here, separating the people from the issue, focusing on interests and not positions,and then looking for options of mutual benefits.

Explanation
Fixed costs (FC) are costs that do not vary with volume. To an airline once aircraft are purchased, flight crews trained and departures scheduled, costs are disproportionately fixed.
Variable costs (VC) arethose which vary with the amount produced. Fuel, catering services and marketing are examples of variable.
LO 2, AC 2.1

Explanation
The following graph shows the factors that shift the supply curve to the left and to the right.
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