One grocery store doesn't bury another by being humanly imperceptibly faster at returning carts than the other by a microsecond, and if they were forced by the structure of the market to spend tons of money on that before investing in being open 24/7 which real customers care far more about and provides far more value, it would seem really weird and like something was really messed up with market incentives in the grocery store industry.
Sure, but at that point I would argue you metaphor is not very useful.
One convenience store would likely "bury" another if it were one block closer to its customers than the other. I wouldn't say the food store industry was "really messed up with market incentives" because of it.
A better example would be two stores were equidistant and the market structure made it make economic sense for one store to pay enormous amounts to have itself jacked up and moved one millimeter closer.
A block closer is massively human perceivable, but we're talking about stuff far below human reaction times.
