On July 13th, webinar on 'The Role of Major Supermarkets for Consumer and Local Commercial Area' was held. This webinar was supported by CFE. Since early 2010s, Korea has been facing this issue also after Korean government started large regulation against big supermarket companies. Currently, government regulates the business managing of major supermarkets in various fields such as restricting business day(opening market is prohibited on Sunday) and giving massive limitation on new permissions of market opening.
In the webinar, each experts made conclusion that current regulation will harm not only the welfare of consumers derived from restriction of choice but also even traditional markets themselves ultimately. Recent analysis showed that small businesses received damage after big supermarket brands shut down operation in specific area because consumers stopped visiting those places after the closure instead of visiting other small shops in that area. Therefore, no one will receive benefits derived from excessive regulation: Only victims are produced on this. In this webinar, many students participated to ask questions on this topic and could get new insight in the eye of consumers.