Cite as: 519 U. S. 278 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
some value in Ohio's state-imposed protections but not enough to offset lower price at some point, see, e. g., Pierobon, Small Customers: The Yellow Brick Road to Deregulation?, 134 Pub. Utils. Fortnightly, No. 6, pp. 14, 15 (1996) (marketers' efforts in California are increasingly directed to attracting consumers in the "small commercial sector," including "schools, hospitals, hotels, restaurants, laundromats, and master-metered apartments," which currently purchase bundled gas from utilities); Salpukas, New Choices for Natural Gas: Retailers Find Users Puzzled as Industry Deregulates, N. Y. Times, Oct. 23, 1996, pp. D1, D4 (indicating that some natural gas marketers in New York City are attempting to lure "mom-and-pop businesses like restaurants and dry-cleaners" away from LDC's, with mixed success). Eliminating the sales tax differential at issue here might well intensify competition between LDC's and marketers for customers in this noncaptive market.
B
In sum, the LDCs' bundled product reflects the demand of a market neither susceptible to competition by the interstate sellers nor likely to be served except by the regulated natural monopolies that have historically supplied its needs. So far as this market is concerned, competition would not be served by eliminating any tax differential as between sellers, and the dormant Commerce Clause has no job to do. There is, however, a further market where the respective sellers of the bundled and unbundled products apparently do compete and may compete further. Thus, the question raised by this case is whether the opportunities for competition between marketers and LDC's in the noncaptive market requires treating marketers and utilities as alike for dormant Commerce Clause purposes. Should we accord controlling significance to the noncaptive market in which they compete, or to the noncompetitive, captive market in which the local utili-
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