This presentation by India was made during the break-out Session 2, “Techniques and evidence for assessing exclusive dealing and bundling” in the discussion “Economic analysis and evidence in abuse cases” held at the 20th meeting of the OECD Global Forum on Competition on 7 December 2021. More papers and presentations on the topic can be found out at oe.cd/eac.

1. Turkish Competition Authority
Şerife Demet KORKUT
Deputy Head
Economic Analysis and
Research Department
OECD Global Forum on Competition 2021
BOS A2: «Techniques and evidence for assessing exclusive dealing
and bundling»
7 December 2021
Economic Analysis and Evidence in Abuse
Cases: The TCA’s Coca Cola Case
(02.09.2021)

2. Turkish Competition Authority
EARD Contribution to Investigations: A Brief Summary of
Procedure
 Competition Board initiates an investigation under the Act on the Protection of Competition.
 The investigation is performed by competition experts (rapporteurs/case handlers) at the
Supervision and Enforcement Departments.
 EARD experts renders opinion, upon request in this ongoing investigation.
 The result of the investigation ( and the decision of the Board) may rely on:
– EARD’s opinion or not (opinions are not binding!)
– Other findings/documents obtained during the investigation period.
2

3. Turkish Competition Authority
EARD Contribution to Investigations: A Brief Summary of
Content
 Requests of the Enforcement Departments from EARD are mainly on:
 Definition of relevant market and/or
 Evaluation of dominance and market power and/or
 Assessment of the abusive conduct (showing the theory of harm).
 Opinions consist of:
 The underlying economic theory/literature referring to the request in question.
 Supportive findings based on descriptive, statistical and econometric analyses.
 Interpretation of the findings in non-econometric terms !
3

4. Turkish Competition Authority
The Coca-Cola Company Case: Exclusivity and Foreclosure of
the Market (2021)
 The file initiated upon a (confidential) complaint in 2019.
 The subject of the file:
 The alleged infringement of the CCC of Competition Act via various conducts toward
«preventing competitors’ sales and thereby causing de facto exclusivity in the final sales
points (kiosques, markets, restaurants etc.)»
 These conducts under investigation are mainly on:
• Discount systems on final sale points.
• Practices on cooler placements at these points (changing the size/number of the
coolers).
4

5. Turkish Competition Authority
The EARD’s Opinion on the Coca-Cola Company Case
 Economic analysis requested from the EARD to evaluate the theory of harm:
«whether discount systems applied and increasing the number/size of cooling cabinets by the
CCC caused de facto exclusivity by foreclosing final sale points»
 Our analysis aimed to determine:
«whether the discounts and changing properties of the coolers had adverse effects on the
sales of competitors»
 time dimension of these possible effects (increasing trend in current periods?)
 cross section dimension of these effects (on different distribution channels:
conventional, organized, on-site consumption: the same effect?)
5

6. Turkish Competition Authority
The EARD’s Opinion on the Coca-Cola Company Case
 The Analysis used the data set:
 Covering the period between 2015-2019 panel data
 Consists of the CCC’s and main competitors’
i. Final sale points and their identities,
ii. Annual sales on these final points (disaggregated on distribution channels),
iii. Annual discounts granted to these points,
iv. Cooler properties (size, number, the number of doors etc.) at those points.
So: more than three millions lines of merged data in Stata.
A very big deal to clean and prepare data for a quantitative analysis.
6

7. Turkish Competition Authority
The EARD’s Opinion on The Coca-Cola Company case
 The Analysis focused on:
A. With respect to sales, whether the sales of all competitors followed the same trend.
B. With respect to discounts, whether the CCC’s discounts were statistically different
with the points where its competitors had sales with coolers and where without
coolers.
C. With respect to coolers, whether the situation of competitors’ cooler and sales
variables suffered changes in points where the CCC increased the number/size of its
coolers.
D. With respect to total effects of the CCC’s sales amount, discount amount and
cooler variables, to what extent and to what direction those variables affected
competitors’ sales significantly in time an in separate distribution channels.
7

8. Turkish Competition Authority
The EARD’s Opinion on The Coca-Cola Company case
 The Analysis used:
 Statistical tools: desprictive statistics and t-test to compare averages of sales and
discounts in time and cross section dimensions.
 Econometric tools: Diff in Diff and panel data regressions to measure the effect of
sales, changing coolers’ properties and discounts of CCC to competitors’ sales.
 Result of the Analysis:
 reached to some competitive concerns raised as a result of the investigated conducts
of CCC.
 reported them to the Enforcement Department.
8

9. Turkish Competition Authority
The End: Commitment
 The result of the file:
 The CCC applied for commitment procedure.
 Commitment mainly on:
• Discounts and investment policies in aggreements signed with final sale points
• Retaining exclusive aggreements for some products in the portfolio.
• Reserving a worthy (25%) percentage of coolers to competitors under some
conditions.
 The Board approved this comprehensive commitment after several negotiations with
CCC and third parties.
 The investigation process was terminated.
9

10. Turkish Competition Authority
Thank you!
Ş. Demet KORKUT
Deputy Head of Department
E-mail: sdkaya@rekabet.gov.tr