Study On The Regulation Of Commercial Bribery In Retail Sector

The retail industry has a critical role in economic development and its healthy,orderly competition paves the way for rolling out the national strategies of consumption upgrade and supply-side reforms.Given the particular role of retail in the whole commodity circulation sectors,bribery activities in the retail often corelate with business models in upstream fields,displaying unique features and being very difficult to discover.These illegal acts not only distort fair competition,damage the interests of competitors and consumer welfare,but also negatively affect suppler-retailer relationship.However,research in this field is found to be limited.It would be valuable to explore how relevant laws are applied in the sector,the reasons for the ineffectiveness in certain areas,and what can be done as preventative measures.Specifically,this paper details in three types of ‘bribery’ acts in retail,which respectively involve sales incentive policy,kickbacks and retailer’s slotting allowance.The judgement and implications were discussed under the context of newly amended laws,then the paper put forward a few suggestions for improvement.Specifically,a)There are still disputes on the definition of ‘third-party influence’ on transactions.This ‘influence’ needs to be defined with a clearer scope and context;otherwise normal business models can be disrupted as unintentional consequence.b)There should be clear definition and penalties provided in the Anti-Unfair Competition Law targeting bribe-taking deed and this should be coordinated with relevant provisions in the Criminal Law.c)False accounting info,often appear with commercial bribery activities though,is not a precondition to judge a case.This should be further clarified to avoid misinterpretations and inconsistency of enforcement.In addition to the above,this article also discussed some procedural obstacles including coordination of information and procedures between law enforcement agencies,optimization of evidence collection procedures.Finally,taking the high-risk areas into account,this paper puts forward some thoughts on improving industry self-regulatory efforts as well as corporate compliance systems,hoping to support retailers with suggestions of setting prevention measures against bribery in their daily business.