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VOLVO TRUCKS NORTH AMERICA, INC. v. REEDERSIMCO GMC, INC. Opinion of the Court

resale of the purchased product. Competition of that char­ acter ordinarily is not involved when a product subject to special order is sold through a customer-speciﬁc competitive bidding process. I Volvo manufactures heavy-duty trucks. Reeder sells new and used trucks, including heavy-duty trucks. 374 F. 3d 701, 704 (CA8 2004). Reeder became an authorized dealer of Volvo trucks in 1995, pursuant to a ﬁve-year franchise agree­ ment that provided for automatic one-year extensions if Reeder met sales objectives set by Volvo. Ibid. Reeder generally sold Volvo’s trucks through a competitive bidding process. Ibid. In this process, the retail customer de­ scribes its speciﬁc product requirements and invites bids from several dealers it selects. The customer’s “decision to request a bid from a particular dealer or to allow a particular dealer to bid is controlled by such factors as an existing rela­ tionship, geography, reputation, and cold calling or other marketing strategies initiated by individual dealers.” Id., at 719 (Hansen, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part). Once a Volvo dealer receives the customer’s speciﬁcations, it turns to Volvo and requests a discount or “concession” off the wholesale price (set at 80% of the published retail price). Id., at 704. It is common practice in the industry for manu­ facturers to offer customer-speciﬁc discounts to their dealers. Ibid.; App. 334, 337. Volvo decides on a case-by-case basis whether to offer a discount and, if so, what the discount rate will be, taking account of such factors as industry-wide de­ mand and whether the retail customer has, historically, pur­ chased a different brand of trucks. App. 348–349, 333–334.1 The dealer then uses the discount offered by Volvo in prepar­ 1

To shield its ability to compete with other manufacturers, Volvo keeps conﬁdential its precise method for calculating concessions offered to deal­ ers. 374 F. 3d 701, 704–705 (CA8 2004); App. 337–338.