A class action against a large restaurant chain is pending in the US. A central system is alleged to calculate price recommendations from non-public sales data for businesses that are formally independent and compete with each other. The company denies any coordination, and the case has not been decided.
The mechanism is also relevant for Swiss firms. When competitors hand their data to the same service and adopt its suggestions, prices move together without anyone having talked to each other. Under Swiss law, price agreements between competitors are considered particularly sensitive.
We advise clarifying for every pricing tool which data it uses, whether competitors use the same service and whether recommendations can be rejected at any time without consequences.