Market StructuresMcConnell and Brue (2004) describe four market structures with which companies align themselves throughout their corporate life. This article will provide examples of the four market structures: pure competition, pure monopoly, monopolistic competition, and oligopoly. Companies can move from market structure to market structure over time and growth. This movement between structures may be the result of product changes, the introduction of competition, or consumer interests. This article will describe one such company that migrated from one facility to another. According to McConnell and Brue (2004), pure competition is “a very large number of firms producing a standardized product.” This is the case of the corn industry. An example of a pure competing company is the "Farmers Cooperative Association" (FCA). A farmers' cooperative association is a group of farmers who, at their convenience, come together to form a cooperative in order to: improve bargaining power; reduce costs; gain market access or expand market opportunities and improve the quality of products or services (Nebraska Department of Agriculture, n.d.) that would not normally be obtainable as an individual farmer. In this way each farmer pays a share to the Cooperation. The Cooperative itself is normally a non-profit organization as profit is made to the members who supply the product. The price is determined by the Board of Trade and is generally non-negotiable. Cooperatives can hold corn at the request of their members to obtain a better price. However, in today's agricultural environment it is common to sell corn before even producing it (Tim Jimenez, personal communication, March 4, 2007). The federal government also controls price to some extent by offering money to farmers to not plant or plant more of a commodity, which raises prices because supply is not available or lowers the price if supply is plentiful. Whatever the price, eventually the farmer ends up taking it or is called a “price taker” (McConnell and Brue, 2004). Farmers individually don't have the volume to influence the price, but the group as a whole can have an effect. In economics, a monopoly is defined as a persistent market situation in which there is only one supplier of a product or service (Wikipedia, 2007 ). In a monopoly, a single company is the sole provider of a product or service. There are no close substitutes, so there is no competition.