At the polar extremes markets with one (monopoly) or a few dominant large firms (oligopoly) are assumed to be imperfectly competitive and firms have the power to restrict supply and raise prices above the competitive level (conduct). More importantly is their power to undertake actions which inhibit new market entry by potential competitors thus protecting their products or services and generating excess profit (performance). At the other extreme are perfectly competitive markets which tend to have large numbers of small firms who have no market power. Thus for a single small firm they have to accept the market price consumers are willing to pay and have no influence over this. Any small firm who tries to raise their prices will lose customers at a significant rate. Thus the average profit rate in competitive markets is lower than in other non-competitive  market structures (performance). 

May I request you to read an article authored by me and Kent Matthews in which we analyzed the market structure and performance in six Arab banking systems.

Al-Muharrami, S. and Matthews, K. (2009) "Market Power versus Efficient-Structure in Arab GCC Banking" Applied Financial Economics, Vol. 19, pages 1487 - 1496.

Structure of market deals with the forms , concentration, size, nature of entry while conduct makes do with general behavior of producers,suppliers and marketers, as they interacted together, marketing channels are also included in this aspect. The margins( gross margin, marketing margins etc) are evaluated  under performance. they are strongly linked up.  for instance effective outcome of market  performance is greatly influenced by its structure and conduct. You can also check some of my articles on this issue. thank you.

Yes, The structure of a market (e.g. the number and relative size of the competitors) determines how they behave ("conduct"), and the behavior, in turn, affects the market outcome ("performance"). Thank you all for your answers.

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