Although outsold by Android, the iPhone and the iOS operating system garners a hugely loyal customer base that comes back for each new iteration of the product. The iPhone changed the way smartphones were made and consistently makes Apple a dominant player, even if they are second place in market share.

Our group decided to use DiGi (a mobile network provider) as our example because there are a lot of companies that offer similar functions but are not perfect substitutes. It is also a market structure with many competitors but offers slightly different services. The different plans and benefits given to customers from each network provider make their own service that much more special compared to the others.

The characteristic of monopolistic competition states there’s low barrier to entry and exit the market. So, a firm will only earn normal profits in a long run. 

L'Oreal had achieved sufficient product differentiation. A wide range of products from professional salon brands, mass retail brands to luxury brands have introduced by L'Oreal. So, other firms cannot duplicate them easily. L'Oreal also developed a well-known and strong brand name in the world by emphasizes advertising on its brands. Therefore, L'Oreal has sufficient monopoly power to realize modest economic profits in long run.

Books are an excellent example monopolistic competition because they vary in their prices, quality of workmanship, readability, quality of illustrations or the lack thereof, and differ according to target audience and subjects, such as college textbooks and novels. Each major category will have many minor categories and the minor categories are also distinguished by the writing styles of the authors. A new front of monopolistic competition occurs among online retailers. In this case, their location does not really matter. What matters is the convenience of shopping online, how well the products are described, and reviews of the products by consumers who actually bought the product. Other important qualities include trustworthiness of the firm and return policies.

These firms are competing with each other by using tricks such as different packaging, scent, product attributes and vitamins, to have buyers differentiate between the competitive products. The companies as a whole are the price-maker because an equilibrium market price is non-existent as they might follow their competitors’ price or their cost of production to set the price. For instance, if L'Oreal set their price at RM13.99 per bottle then  Sunsilk may opt to follow the trend or increase the price by a little, they may even drop the price a little. 

Apart from that, in this industry, the firms are earning three types of profits when they’re in the short run, supernormal, subnormal and normal profits.Supernormal profit means that the firms are earning more profit, subnormal profit basically means that the firms are having economic loss whereas normal profits means that there is no increase or decrease in the firms’ profits. If Head & Shouldersare having supernormal profit that means the firm are earning more profits in the short run.