A specific markets structure depends on a number of interconnected characteristics. These characteristic may include but are not limited to; level of competition, product differences, ease of entering the market, potential costs of exiting the market, and the general strength of buyers and/or sellers. The struggle, or competition, between organizations to be more profitable and efficient helps drive a healthy market. This paper intends to point out the characteristics defining different market structures and their respective complications deriving from entering new markets. Additionally, each type of market structure will be observed to see how profit can be organically maximized.

Markets can be broken down into specific categories. Some of which include; oligopolies, monopolies, monopolistic and perfect competition. An oligopoly is a type of market that is controlled by a small set of sellers. Characteristics of monopolies can consist of organizations that are able to control the cost of a local good or service and lack of capitalistic competition. A perfect competition suggests a market that remains uncontrolled in terms of price manipulation; this is because none of the organizations are efficient enough to set competitive pricing.

Price determined in each market structure

Price management is an organizations ability to control the prices of its own goods or services. This indicates the range of competition organizations have within a specific target market. This is a strongly influencing factor on that market. Perfect competition and monopolistic competition structures contain many firms in one market. No one firm holds the majority of the market share. Oligopoly structure occurs when few firms are in the market. Monopoly exists when only one seller is present for a given product. A product type base factor in market structure is non-price competition. The range of product differences is a determinant in this structure. Perfect competition, in this instance, would contain many firms that sell similar goods. There are few differences between the products or services that these firms offer. In a monopolistic competition structure, the goods or services will have some differences. In an oligopoly, the goods will have some differences that are more notable. Those in a monopoly will be, of course, all the same, since they are all produced by one firm.

Another non-price competition factor is advertising. In a perfect competition, each firm will produce the same goods. In this setting, non-price differences do not exist. Advertising is used by monopolies, but it is not really required since there is no other supplier for those goods and services. Oligopoly structure firms use advertising a great deal. Monopolistic competition firms use advertising, but less so that oligopoly.

Entry barriers for new firms into a given market help determine a given market structure. Perfect and monopolistic competition allow for relatively easy entrance into the market. In these cases, investment to join is generally minimal. Barriers in these cases are considered to be low. In oligopoly, the entry barriers are quite high. This is due to the need for considerable investment to join that market. Barriers are not considered a factor in monopoly since any new firm in the market would change the structure automatically.