APPLICATION OF THE ESSENTIAL FACILITIES DOCTRINE IN THE ANALYSIS OF THE BIG DATA OPERATORS BEHAVIOR

Abstract

Digital transformation of economy leads to changes in industrial markets and firms behavior on them. They begin to compete basing not on expansion of their market share but on creating a benefit for a consumer. Therefore, increase of firm competitiveness requires information about consumer preferences and behavior, which in turn leads to a changes in the role and forms of supply chain participants interaction. In such a situation, big data operators gain a competitive advantage, backed by high fixed costs of extracting value from big data, which provides monopoly power. The question arises about the possibility of considering big data and the behavior of such data operators based on the provisions of the essential facilities doctrine. The research is based on the theory of essential facilities and its application in the construction of an optimization model of big data market subjects behavior. The matter of big data attribution to essential facilities is solved basing on study of approaches to interpretation of big data and essential facilities categories, analysis of interrelation and size of big data processing costs, building a model of big data operator behavior when supplying firms on neighboring markets with processed information. It is shown that big data in processed form can be attributed to essential facilities as their collection and processing are connected to high initial costs which block possibility of their duplication by competitors. However, the peculiarity of it as essential facilities is that they do not completely limit the possibility of entering the market, but determine the competitiveness of firms in it, which causes the growth of the importance of such an entry barrier as the formation of customer loyalty. Such results raise the question of the need and ways to regulate access to big data as essential facilities, since their incorrect regulation or lack of such can lead to a decrease in the markets or supply chains performance and the effectiveness of industrial or antimonopoly regulation.