Our second point is that internet distribution, while now an essential part of the distribution system of virtually any retail product, potentially compromises the incentives for upmarket, bricks-and-mortar stores to invest in enhancing the brand image of a product or even to carry the product. This is because some consumers who are attracted to the product by the retail environment, the retail store prestige and product promotion at the store will subsequently purchase the product much more cheaply on the internet. If upmarket stores capture fewer of the consumers, they will, as a matter of simple economics, invest less in product promotion. And where the reduction in investment compromises product image, demand for the product will drop. To avois this, an upstream supplier of a product will often want to limit this distribution so as to encourage bricks- and-mortar outlets to promote or even to carry its products. Restricting distri- bution represents a cost to the supplier because, other things being equal, low retail margins and wide distribution (including over the internet) are good for sales—a basic economic point which Kinsella et al fail to acknowledge.5 The supplier that bears the cost of restricted distribution does so in order to encourage more investment in image, or distribution through more upmarket stores. In short, selective distribution is simply a means by which a supplier changes the trade-off between price and image (or promotion or other retailer- supplied product attributes) in an unrestrained retail market. For many products, as Kinsella et al point out, the internet is a complement to purchases at bricks-and-mortar stores, for example because consumers gather information about a product before shopping at a store.6 If this positive effect dominates the negative effect of internet on retailer investment incentives, in terms of the overall impact on demand, a supplier will not restrict internet sales and a policy issue or legal case regarding selective distribution will not arise. The key piece of evidence in any selective distribution case involving internet restrictions, however, is that the supplier has chosen to adopt the strategy. In any real world case of restricted distribution, the positive effect of the internet on information provision is therefore not the dominant effect. Consumer benefits, not firm profits, are at the heart of European competition law. Some economists might argue that the willingness of a product supplier to bear the cost of higher retail prices in exchange for greater investment in product image through selective distribution signals that the trade-off is necessarily in the consumers’ interest as well. We do not. Kinsella et al attribute to us the proposition that “regulators should trust that supplier-imposed vertical