Research On Loyalty Discount From The Perspective Of Antitrust Law

Loyalty discount is offered to consumers when they purchase up to discount threshold of the operator within a period of time.It is divided into sales discount,market share discount,incremental discount and retroactive discount and so on.Generally speaking,loyalty discount can reflect the production efficiency of enterprises and increase consumer welfare.However,when operators with a dominant market position abuse their dominant market position and implement loyalty discount,it will exclude or restrict competition commonly.Therefore,Chinese relevant laws should regulate this kind of behavior.In the practice of loyalty discount regulation in our country,the first case of loyalty discount,Tetra Pak loyalty discount case,has typical significance.Through this case,we can see that Chinese antitrust law has limitations with regulating the behavior of loyalty discount,include the unclear concept and nature of loyalty discount,the ambiguous standards of illegality,and lack of reasonable defense reasons.The enforcement of loyalty discount is insufficient,too.In addition,the uneven distribution of the burden of proof will be a barrier to loyalty discount lawsuits.In order to regulate the loyalty discount timely and effectively,we need to clarify the concept and nature of loyalty discount to solve the problem of defining the concept and nature of loyalty discount.Then we need to establish the identification criteria of loyalty discount and determine the defense reasons,so as to distinguish the efficient loyalty discount and the harmful loyalty discount.On the other hand,we should establish a clear safe harbor system and provide an effective framework for law enforcement agencies.Taking into account the particularity of loyalty discount civil litigation and the limitations of the principle of "who advocates and who gives evidence",we need to improve the distribution of burden of proof.Antitrust regulation of loyalty discount does not mean that our antitrust law blindly protects the inefficient market competitors,nor does it mean that our antitrust law prevents companies from gaining market dominance by legitimate business strategies.The antitrust law respects the competition rules of the market,and it is to protect and maintain this competition order so that Chinese antitrust law needs to regulate the harmful behavior of abusing market dominance timely and effectively,including the anticompetitive loyalty discount.