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You’ve heard the term oligopoly—a market with a small number of sellers. An oligopsony may be less familiar—that’s a market with few buyers. For example, if you raise cocoa beans anywhere in the world, you can sell to Cargill or ADM, and that’s about it. To get your movie into the cineplexes, you must talk to the four or five companies that own almost all the screens in North America. And if you make aircraft parts, your salespeople had better get into Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and just a handful of other companies that assemble planes.

A version of this article appeared in the March 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review.

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