Quote:
Originally Posted by Flames in 07
What you say at first is true, but then you fall of the rails with the rest.
What you say in the first paragraph is true, but then you blur the retailer with the big vertically integrated in the second and third paragraph which is not true.
That's fine, you don't have to care about the individual franchise owners, but I don't get the reason. Imperial makes good money and therefore you say boo hoo to the franchise owner who does not have anything to do with those big earnings or share in them in any way.
That's like me saying, Banks make lots of money so I don't give a crap about the tellers.
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Nothing fell off the rails actually. The point of the original poster and other people like you has been that selling gas isn't that lucrative because the retailers aren't making money.
My point is that the above mentioned point doesn't matter. I am not swayed into thinking that the gas retailers are actually little guys and because of which, gas prices are reasonable. The fact of the matter is that the supply chain is what matters in selling gas. The market is, for the most part, uncompetitive due to high degrees of vertical integration between 4 or 5 firms. They reap the benefits and then try to cry poor because the little retailers aren't making money. The only thing the retailers aren't getting is their cut of the vertically integrated firm's pie. That's not an issue that I care about. It's an internal issue to BP, Shell and Exxon.
Nobody forced these retailers to buy franchises and focusing on their business model is a straw man to deflect attention to what's really going on.
Moreover, there is a certain myth of the small mom and pop gas franchise owner. Most of the franchises are owned by holding companies who themselves own multiple franchises.
So, I'll ask, where did I fall off the rails again?