They aren’t working together so when they look out the window and see the price they match or go lower.
The stories my wife tells me about her gas station job say this is wrong. Her boss has binoculars readily available so they can see if the station across the street changes their prices, and they’d follow suit.
Yes. But people are also extremely sensitive to the price of gas. So if he wants to draw more people he drops it. It’s chained, but not a cartel.
They also did it with raising prices, and both did the same way. It may not have been official, but the behavior was the same either way.
That’s the thing though, because they don’t have an agreement across the city, if he and his neighbor go too high someone will undercut them. He’ll even under cut his neighbor if he thinks he can get enough more business. I’m not disputing that he’ll follow them up too. A cartel differs by manipulating the market instead of responding to the market.