What legal worries do you have about each of these situations?

You are feeling very good about your life. This positive feeling is due in large part to your recent promotion to national sales manager of Ever-Present Technologies, Inc. Your company offers full-service consulting and computer sales to manufacturers, especially those in the consumer products areas.

Two week into your new responsibilities, you are beginning to lose your good feelings. This change of spirit results from hearing about various activities among your sales personnel. First, you learn one of your new sales representatives has been visiting with a competitor’s salesperson about each focusing on particular customers while agreeing not to call on the other’s customers. Second, a district manager reports that a large, extremely valuable customer is asking for a pricing structure that is more favorable than prices offered to any other customer. The district manager expressed concern that your company may lose this customer’s business.

Please respond to the following discussion questions based on your reading of the scenario and chapter 16, “Regulating Competition – Anti-Trust Laws” (Reed, Pagattaro, Cahoy, Shedd, & Morehead, 2013):

• What legal worries do you have about each of these situations?
• What type of information should a training/education program for your sales force include?
• What are the ramifications if you decide to ignore these situations as you try to return to you “happy” state of mind?