I'm going to be careful here, but, it is a fairly common 'business' tactic - if you own 1 shop you need 100% of the income from that shop in order to survive, in rose hill there is enough custom to keep one shop going and for the owners to have a fairly decent living out of it.
If you own two shops you only need 50% of the business from the area that shop is in to get a living from your two shops, if you have 4 shops you only need 25% and so on.
When you set up in direct competition your sole intention is to poach the business, however you only need 50% of that business.
The person with one shop goes bust, losing their house, livelihood etc.
Once the competition goes bust you increase your prices to recover the loss you have incurred by selling at a loss for the previous 12 months.
Its dirty, and I for one won't support it.
Andy