1.   Buying groups, Marketing schemes and innovative ways of pooling farm resources are all developing.

2.   The retailers themselves are increasingly finding strength in numbers, signing up for Internet-based auctions sites and buying groups.

3.   Although the principals of the buying group remained tightlipped about final deals of an agreement, Boisvert seemed at pains to temper worker hostility toward the Sunbeam chief.

4.   And while smaller buying groups also accept fees, they say they operate differently.

5.   Big buying groups like health maintenance organizations now force distributors to cut their prices.

6.   A third is that manufacturers freed of the need to pay fees to the buying groups will pass on the savings to hospitals.

7.   A trade association representing the buying groups is expected to hand in a draft code of conduct at the end of this week.

8.   But Premier officials say they also renegotiate prices on contracts and some hospitals add that the size of the big buying groups can command better prices.

9.   But rather than negotiate with companies, Pingree decided to calculate the savings a big buying group would deserve and to fix the prices by law.

10.   But unlike other purchasing agents, hospital buying groups like Child Health are financed not by the hospitals that buy supplies but by the companies that sell them.