Regulation Market Research Reports & Industry Analysis

Regulation is an issuance of legally binding rules and orders by a governmental authority that pertain to certain areas of industry. Retail regulation is primarily concerned with the rules and orders that affect smaller amounts of service that are retailed expressly to the consumer. Retail regulation puts in place the degree, time, and amount of retailing services through the setting of standards for monitoring practices, licenses, tariffs, and quality of service. Retail regulation prioritizes the final uses, and directly affects the general consumer. Customer service, consumer advocacy, public participation, end use tariffs, and the growth of regulatory commissions that are consumer-oriented, all provide the drivers for retail regulation. The regulation commission frequently acts as a referee; rules of the commission are set in place and applied in order to test the retailing operations. Regulatory commissions are becoming increasingly aware that consumers need to be at the forefront of the field, and as such are placing more emphasis on the practices of customer service, end use reliability, and retailing prices. They have come to the conclusion that consumers and companies that work in tandem will create further success in the regulatory processes.

Competition is unavoidable in the regulation realm, and as such the commissions have several choices in order to effective regulate the resulting monopolies: protecting the consumers from a monopoly, reducing the size and scope of a monopoly, or managing the transition to increase forms of competition (a combination of the first two choices). As competition can at times create a differing level of efficiency within companies that had be unable to occur under other forms of regulation. However, though competition may create positive regulation effects, negative effects of competition must also be considered so retail services do not suffer unnecessarily. At this juncture, it is imperative that retail regulation commission focus on the retail customers to create a successful regulation infrastructure.