> at the moment I don’t know of any examples of physical stores having this problem even across a single capitalist nation.
Retailers bully wholesalers and manufacturers all the time when they represent a significant amount of total sales.
You always hear stories of "this was great until the bean counters told us we needed to shave 25c off the production costs and that killed its longevity." What you don't hear is that the bean counters were told by the sales managers that the retailer wouldn't list the product at $X because they didn't think their customers would pay more than $Y, and $Y would make the project unprofitable. And the retailer does 50% of our sales in the US, so we can't tell them to screw off!
One solution to all these problems is to enshrine direct-to-consumer sales in law, for digital and physical goods.
Retailers bully wholesalers and manufacturers all the time when they represent a significant amount of total sales.
You always hear stories of "this was great until the bean counters told us we needed to shave 25c off the production costs and that killed its longevity." What you don't hear is that the bean counters were told by the sales managers that the retailer wouldn't list the product at $X because they didn't think their customers would pay more than $Y, and $Y would make the project unprofitable. And the retailer does 50% of our sales in the US, so we can't tell them to screw off!
One solution to all these problems is to enshrine direct-to-consumer sales in law, for digital and physical goods.