Federal Trade Commission

These Guidelines outline the principal analytical techniques, practices, and the enforcement policy of the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (the "Agencies") with respect to mergers and acquisitions involving actual or potential competitors ("horizontal mergers") under the federal antitrust laws. The relevant statutory provisions include Section 7 of the Clayton Act, 15 U.S.C. 18, Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, 15 U.S.C. 1, 2, and Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, 15 U.S.C. 45. Most particularly, Section 7 of the Clayton Act prohibits mergers if "in any line of commerce or in any activity affecting commerce in any section of the country, the effect of such acquisition may be substantially to lessen competition, or to tend to create a monopoly."The Agencies seek to identify and challenge competitively harmful mergers while avoiding unnecessary interference with mergers that are either competitively beneficial or neutral. Most merger analysis is necessarily predictive, requiring an assessment of what will likely happen if a merger proceeds as compared to what will likely happen if it does not. Given this inherent need for prediction, these Guidelines reflect the congressional intent that merger enforcement should interdict competitive problems in their incipiency and that certainty about anticompetitive effect is seldom possible and not required for a merger to be illegal.

The FTC is a highly productive and efficient, bipartisan independent agency with a broad mission. It is the only federal agency with jurisdiction to both protect consumers and maintain competition in most sectors of the economy. The agency enforces laws that prohibit business practices that are unfair or deceptive to consumers, or anticompetitive, and seeks to do so without impeding legitimate business activity. The vast majority of our law enforcement decisions are made unanimously.The FTC also educates consumers and businesses to encourage informed consumer choices, compliance with the law, and public understanding of the competitive process. In addition, the FTC promotes consumer protection and competitive markets through its research, advocacy, and policy work.

We are in the era of big data. With a smartphone now in nearly every pocket, a computer in nearly every household, and an ever-increasing number of Internet-connected devices in the marketplace, the amount of consumer data flowing throughout the economy continues to increase rapidly.The analysis of this data is often valuable to companies and to consumers, as it can guide the development of new products and services, predict the preferences of individuals, help tailor services and opportunities, and guide individualized marketing. At the same time, advocates, academics, and others have raised concerns about whether certain uses of big data analytics may harm consumers, particularly lowincome and underserved populations.To explore these issues, the Federal Trade Commission ("FTC" or "the Commission") held a public workshop, Big Data: A Tool for Inclusion or Exclusion?, on September 15, 2014. The workshop brought together stakeholders to discuss both the potential of big data to create opportunities for consumers and to exclude them from such opportunities. The Commission has synthesized the information from the workshop, a prior FTC seminar on alternative scoring products, and recent research to create this report. Though "big data" encompasses a wide range of analytics, this report addresses only the commercial use of big data consisting of consumer information and focuses on the impact of big data on low-income and underserved populations. Of course, big data also raises a host of other important policy issues, such as notice, choice, and security, among others. Those, however, are not the primary focus of this report.As "little" data becomes "big" data, it goes through several phases. The life cycle of big data can be divided into four phases: (1) collection; (2) compilation and consolidation; (3) analysis; and (4) use. This report focuses on the fourth phase and discusses the benefits and risks created by the use of big data analytics; the consumer protection and equal opportunity laws that currently apply to big data; research in the field of big data; and lessons that companies should take from the research. Ultimately, this report is intended to educate businesses on important laws and research that are relevant to big data analytics and provide suggestions aimed at maximizing the benefits and minimizing its risks.

This report is the latest in a series on cigarette sales, advertising, and promotion that the Federal Trade Commission ("Commission") has prepared since 1967.The statistical tables appended to this report provide information on domestic sales and advertising and promotional activity by the largest U.S. cigarette manufacturers. The tables were compiled from data contained in special reports submitted to the Commission pursuant to compulsory process by: Altria Group, Inc.; Commonwealth Brands, Inc.; Lorillard, Inc.; Reynolds American, Inc.; and Vector Group Ltd.