To protect an innovation or to control the sale of products, companies resort to such strategies as licences and contracts organized through the legal system, and such assignments often reinforce entry barriers and, thus, the structural characteristics of markets.
Performance can be considered in terms of consumer satisfaction, efficiency of operations, the growth rates of firms and industries, firms' market shares and profitability. Within tourism supply, short-term performance measures have sometimes been paramount, such as in the UK package holiday sector, where the concern has been for the growth of sales and market shares, often at the expense of efficiency and profitability. Performance is affected by public policy, especially changes in regulation, international trading arrangements and competition laws, which have played an important role in tourism. Price control exerted a strong influence in the transport sector in the past, such as in the setting of international air fares, which governments implicitly, if not overtly, supported. Furthermore, the promotion of tourism by public sector bodies and the provision of subsidies and/or tax incentives have had a marked impact on production, for example in relation to the supply of tourist accommodation.