Concentración Económica en el Mercado Cervecero Ecuatoriano

Mergers between competitors are a common business practice that generates important consequences for the market, one of them is economic concentration, which can affect the free competition in the short, medium and long term. In Ecuador, the beer market is an interesting area of study, since it represents a highly concentrated market, with few participants in which the Superintendence of Market Power Control has established the conditions for the merger between two of its most relevant participants: National Brewery (SABMiller) and Ambev (Anheuser-Busch Inbev). This article analyzes the economic concentration of the Ecuadorian beer sector and the effects of the merger between these two competitors. This research is a qualitative-quantitative study in which the characteristics of the Ecuadorian beer sector and the conditions of the merger were evaluated, to determine the levels of concentration and possible trends in the supply and behavior of this sector by using concentration indicators and data of sales volumes between 2013 and 2015. That showed that there is a highly concentrated market, with a Herfindahl index above 9000, and with conditions that null the possibility of short-term market competition