Should the relationship between retail chains and their suppliers be regulated?

Unfair trade practices (UTP) mean trade practices, which greatly deviate from proper business conduct and discord with proper business practices. Such practices are possible when the parties have significant inequalities in negotiation leverage. Negotiation leverage can be from both the retailer’s and supplier’s side (for example, manufacturers who have a wide range of popular food products). Today in Ukraine there are more and more complaints from small and medium-sized suppliers who believe that they suffer from major retailers’ increasingly UTP.

The purpose of this study is to find answers to the following questions:

• What is the market failure of UTP?
• Is there a UTP problem in Ukrainian retail and if there is, whether it should be regulated?
• How to regulate the UTP problem: through codes and rules of conduct or legislation?