You are the type of person who needs a quart of coffee in the morning just to register a pulse. Family and friends occasionally check to see if you have a pulse. Today, you are likely to spend a great deal of time surfing the Internet looking to buy either a wall poster commemorating Thor Heyerdahl's Pacific crossing aboard the Kon-Tiki or decorative garden figurines. Be on the lookout for crowded shopping malls. You should consider shopping at stores or businesses beginning with the letter K, but do not buy any products with a serial number or product code containing the number 540840. Your preferred shopping venue is department stores. Your special symbol is the at sign (@).

As a Blue Placidola, you are easy-going and even-tempered, calm and composed. For you, the hectic pace of a crowded shopping mall during the holiday rush is nothing, it's little more than a tranquil stroll in the park. Life is good. Life goes on. Why worry. You are a happy shopper and you seldom fret over trivial details of a market exchange, in part because you are astute enough to get moderately low prices and relatively good deals.

A market characterized by a small number of large buyers controlling the buying-side of a market. Oligopsony is the buying-side equivalent of a selling-side oligopoly. Much as a oligopoly is a market dominated by a few large sellers, oligopsony is a market dominated by a few large buyers. While oligopsony could be analyzed for any type of market it tends to be most relevant for factor markets in which a handful of firms control the buying of a factor. Two related buying side market structures are monopsony and monopsonistic competition.

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Our pedestrian's jaunt through the economy is not, unfortunately, an unrestrained shopping spree for confectioneries, spark plug tools, and Houston, Texas. We have other important errands to run. At the moment we need to hike over to Shady Valley's exclusive provider of cable television services, the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television Company, Inc., to inquire about a mysterious fee that appeared last month's bill.

The good news is that the Merciless Monolithic Media Masters (the 4M people) Cable office is a mere 2 miles (3 kilometers for the metrically inclined) from the Shady Valley Central Town Sprawling Hills Shopping Mall. A hop, skip, and a moderately long jump later, our excursion through the economy takes us to the front door of the 4M Cable Television Company where I hope to discover why last month's cable bill included a $3,569 charge for something called "The Vacation Channel." I didn't even know I had a vacation channel. (But, I'm sure it's a great channel, and if I don't have it, then I will certainly subscribe. Please don't disconnect me.)

Of course, because this an afternoon workday, the doors of the 4M office are locked. I can almost make out, through the expensive stained glass windows, what appears to be several Merciless Monolithic Media Masters Cable Television employees, with champaign bottles in hand, dancing on expensive mahogany desks. Let's not disturb them. As they say in the cable business, an upset worker is a disconnected customer.
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