A Study on the Antitrust Legal Framework for Minimum Price Agreements in Live Streaming E-Commerce

电商主播与供应商达成的最低价协议看似为消费者争取到最大的价格福利，实则存在扭曲市场定价机制、削弱电商市场信任度、挤压供应链利润等负面影响，有损电商经济的可持续发展。更有甚者，电商主播利用最低报价协议夺得商品定价权，人为确定商品价格下限，削弱在价格上的潜在竞争对手优势，产生明显的反竞争效果。实践中针对所产生的共谋效应，各国反垄断当局普遍在垄断协议制度下分析该种条款的竞争问题，但由于电商主播身份的双重性，垄断协议定性上存在纵横矛盾的问题。实践中应重点关注双方是否存在“竞争关系”以及最低报价协议所产生竞争损害的范围大小来准确判断垄断协议的纵横性质。在滥用市场支配制度下分析电商直播最低报价协议所产生的排他效应，因平台经济高度动态和不存在产能不足的竞争特性使得传统判定因素不可执行、规制方法难以操作。因此在具体认定标准上需结合互联网经济的典型特征，围绕头部主播直播间单独界定相关市场，细化判定电商经营者市场支配地位的认定标准。While minimum price agreements between e-commerce live streamers and suppliers may appear to secure the greatest price benefits for consumers, they actually have negative effects—such as distorting market pricing mechanisms, undermining trust in e-commerce markets, and squeezing supply chain profits—which harm the sustainable development of the digital economy. More critically, by leveraging these agreements, live streamers seize pricing control over goods, artificially setting price floors that weaken potential competitors’ pricing advantages, resulting in clear anti-competitive effects. In practice, antitrust authorities across jurisdictions generally assess the competitive concerns raised by such clauses under the framework of monopoly agreements, analyzing their collusive effects. But due to the duality of the e-commerce anchor’s identity, there are vertical and horizontal contradictions in the characterization of monopoly agreements. In practice, the vertical and horizontal nature of a monopoly agreement should be accurately judged by focusing on whether there is a “competitive relationship” between the two parties and the extent of the competitive harm caused by the minimum offer agreement. In the abuse of market dominance system to analyse the exclusionary effect produced by the minimum offer agreement of e-commerce live, due to the highly dynamic nature of platform economies and their competition characteristics which lack capacity constraints, traditional regulatory criteria become unenforceable, and governance methods prove difficult to implement. Therefore, in terms of specific determination criteria, it is necessary to combine the typical characteristics of the Internet economy, separately define the relevant market around the head anchor live broadcasting room, and refine the determination criteria for determining the dominant market position of the e-commerce operator.