A. Research Motivation and Purpose
Under the impact resulting from the waves of liberalization, diversification, and deregulation from the end of the 1980s, the Ministry of Education (MOE) has gradually allowed private sectors to supply textbooks for elementary and junior high schools since 1996. After examination by MOE, these up-to-standard textbooks have been printed and sent to different schools for selection of which ones can be used. This was coordinated with the systems of "Nine-year Compulsory Curriculum" and "One Outline, Multiple Textbook Edition Policy" that elementary schools had overall provided since 2002, MOE no longer edited any textbooks (the original MOD textbooks) and encouraged the private sector to be in charge of supplying them. The textbook market had been overall opened since 2002. However, when the private sector was making maximum effort to strive for market, MOE suddenly announced to restart editing some part of textbooks (MOD textbooks), printing and going on to the market from 2005 onwards, in order to compete with private sector publications. When MOD textbooks were put on market, controversies occurred — MOE’s authority endorsement led to its own advantage and many disputes bringing about doubts for whether competition law should interfere. At the end of December 2006, Hao Lung-bin was elected as Taipei’s Mayor. To bring the "One Outline, One Textbook Edition Policy", which he promised to advance if elected, into full practice, he started promoting one-version textbooks by making alliance with other cities and counties together in early 2007. Other relevant policies still remain unfinished simply because the stand of "One Outline, One Textbook Edition Policy t" is contrary to the Central Government’s policies. Taipei is an important indicator for students entering higher schools. Therefore, this future development of this policy immediately attracts high attention from all fields. To cope with this policy, private sectors will make some possible steps for dynamic marketing. Therefore, the Competition Authority also need to keep paying attention to this issue.
The textbook market is prone to monopolization as the outcome of merger and competition. Thus, some of the textbook publishers retain strong market power and can enjoy superb advantages; therefore, in the process of price negotiation, sales and transactions of textbooks, they can enjoy a superb advantage, leading the market competition mechanism to malfunction. On the other hand, in order to strive for or dominate market share, proprietors who have a monopolist-like status like to conduct some unfair behaviors -- for example, marketing their products by giving free promotional items as gifts. Therefore, a competitive function falls into an appalling state for textbook market. Meantime, drastically excessive competition also occurs and then causes serious conflicts. Naturally, analysis of competition regulation of the textbook market becomes extremely complicated and difficult. These problems indeed give a great challenge to the Competition Authority that what point of view is accepted when implementing the law and what standard is reached in the law enforcement.
Textbook publications are supposedly connected with profound educational significance. So it’s characteristic is different from ordinary products. In the textbook market, there is a unique feature of "separation of choosers from price payers." Since being founded, the Fair Trade Commission has always considered about the existence of trading counterparts’ as a presupposition and set up legal implementation standards. Now, our Commission faces a great challenge that has never happened before. In the past, the Commission has amended relevant administrative regulations many times to meet needs. However, owing to the complexity, complication and rapidly changing features of the textbook industry, the problems related to this industry still haven’t been entirely resolved yet. Therefore, in this research, by collecting relevant information at home and abroad, special features in textbook market are discussed in depth, and assessment of the market’s monopolist inappropriate marketing behaviors such as offering free gifts in competition law is further analyzed. It is hoped that the research can be a reference for the revision of the law or law enforcement.
B. Research Area and Methodology
The reasons why problems concerning textbooks have attracted all fields’ attention in recent years are that they stand for authority of knowledge on one hand and behind the market scene is a complicated game in how to get profits on the other hand. To strive for enormous profits from the markets of textbooks and behind-the-scene reference books, many proprietors have made their best with efforts to persuade schoolteachers to use textbooks published by their own publishing houses. Their various ways of marketing strategies have the great effect of expanding the market. The most controversial in legal sense is the situation of giving gifts or benefits to schools or teachers. However, it becomes one of the most used strategies in expanding market. Whether proprietors’ behavior of giving various items of objects is necessary and legal or not often causes controversy. The reason is that textbooks are special products with their highly educational and cultural meanings that are distinctively different from normal products and even normal cultural publications in quality. Naturally, how competition law evaluates proprietors’ marketing behaviors becomes a task in which our Commission needs to think carefully and make right decisions. Therefore, this research, directly aiming at the evaluation on the market’s monopolist inappropriate marketing behaviors such as offering free gifts in competition law, proceeds with further and in-depth discussion. Meantime, Taiwan has, at present, a nine-year compulsory education system, including elementary school and junior high school. There are a great number of students that are involved with this system. So the scope of this research is limited to the marketing behaviors of textbooks used in elementary and junior high schools.
The newly opened and rapidly transformed market is what this research targets. The textbook system is related to affecting our nation’s long-term future. The enourmous niche hidden behind shouldn’t be ignored. In consideration of the various features mentioned above, the research project employs the following four methods to understand what the current market situations and problems are. The research directions and contents are as follows：
- Document Analysis: widely collecting and researching documents at home and abroad, proceeding with reading, organizing and exploring, profoundly analyzing documentary information and data to be a foundation for concrete evidence and formulating research conclusions and suggestions.
- Advice from Experts: In the research period, four forums of "Regulations on Promotional Gifts and Prizes under the Fair Trade Law in Terms of Elementary and Junior High School Textbook Marketing Enterprises" take place in Taipei, Taichung, Kaohsiung, and Hualien. Industrial, governmental and academic experts are invited to offer their professional opinions so that the current state and reason for textbook market proprietors’ marketing behavior of offering promotional gifts and prizes can be fully realized. It helps to understand about the positive or negative influence that offering promotional gifts and prizes brings about, and the ideas and opinions of educational and legal exports towards the Commission’s relevant regulations.
- Questionnaire: Questionnaires are designed and sent out to the educational competent authorities of every county and city, elementary and junior high schools’ teachers, students’ parents and textbook proprietors. It is hoped to understand different groups of people’s views on how textbook publication proprietors’ marketing behavior of offering promotional gifts and prizes can be regulated. After 554 copies of questionnaires are sent out, effective samples of 403 copies are returned.
- On-the-spot Concrete Evidence: Visiting seven elementary schools in Taipei City, Taipei County, Taoyuan County and Keelung City to proceed with the research. The researcher tries to understand the nature of schools’ explanatory meetings and approaches of offering promotional gifts or the arrangements for certain terms. Also, the researcher actually obtains proprietors’ promotional gifts in order to proceed with further analysis.
C. Research Structure
Under the premise of the above-mentioned research purposes, questions, and methods, the main structural points in this paper are listed below：
- Directly aiming at Taiwan’s process of opening textbook market, this paper explores reasons, changes and the history of allowing reforms in policies concerning textbooks.
- It studies Taiwan’s textbook industrial structure, competition situation, and procedure of publishing textbooks and then employs them to analyze selection and adoption of textbooks and their relations with Fair Trade Law.
- It also collects information about selections of textbooks employed by countries like Japan, USA, Canada, UK, Spain and etc. The information can be brought into references for regulations and cases under the competition law. In the future when our Commission makes regulations and executes them for individual cases, these can be instrumental.
- It also organizes our Commission’s current regulations on marketing behaviors of offering promotional gifts, the past cases, and the future problems that might need to be resolved. Concentrating on legal and enforcement disputes that our Commission’s current regulations encounter, this paper proposes concrete solutions to each concern individually.
- Gathering research results, it also proposes its conclusion. Looking at problems and dilemmas that the textbook market faces currently. It proposes general and concrete suggestions for competent educational authorities, proprietors and our Commissions.
D. Research Conclusion and Suggestion
The present regulation of the "Fair Trade Commission Policy Statements on the Distribution of Elementary and Junior High School Textbooks" presents the indefiniteness of the judgment standards. This paper makes suggestions as follows. (1) Judgment standards should be applied strictly. Within the current regulations, an extra definite condition in which "necessary for teaching and are only used during classes" should be added. (2) Information of offering promotional gifts should be open and transparent in public in advance. Proprietors should be asked to send information concerning promotional gifts and contents of textbooks at the same time for examination. Alternatively, information should be open in the public while textbooks are sent for examination so that it can be known. (3) Fairness for every school should be considered before promotional gifts are offered. It means that promotional gifts should be given to all the schools that select the particular textbooks for use. In addition, the contents of promotional gifts should be the same. Quantity standards should be consistent, that is, all the teachers and students should have an equal opportunity for use and learning.