Consumer protection: Corrective measures

The failure of contemporary economies to give consumers “what they really want” manifests itself in a set of “consumer problems” that give rise to the demand for consumer protection. The pivotal problems: monopoly, informationally imperfect markets, consumer dissatisfaction or grievances, the underrepresentation of consumers, disadvantaged consumers. This article deals with the entire spectrum of measures designed to eliminate or correct these problems. It suggests criteria for assessing any corrective measure and deals generally with the merits and drawbacks of regulatory and legislative approaches before considering specific corrective measures. The body of the paper focuses on specific measures, giving examples and citing advantages and disadvantages. The paper is summarized by posing the crucial questions in consumer protection on which policy-makers and citizens alike must make up their minds.     

Reproducing “rhetrickery” in online fertility marketing: harnessing the “rhetoric of the possible”

ABSTRACT

This article addresses the gap in research on visual and narrative persuasion in online fertility marketing contexts and reveals their reliance on rhetorical ruses embedded in the language of “choice” and “empowerment”. We assess four websites targeting women and men who have experienced infertility and expose their “digirhetrickery”, or use of deceptive rhetoric in digital space which exploits gendered stereotypes of the female body in ways that ultimately mislead their target markets about assisted reproductive technologies (ARTs) and the “liberatory” potential they offer. We advance digital rhetoric as an analytical method to the field of consumer research in order to engage in a reflexive analysis that reveals these underhand ideological operations. As “authorial voices” and narrative agents in digital advertising discourse are more cunningly subterranean, this study shows how the instrumentalization of “consumer empowerment” has become increasingly hyperbolic with particularly problematic consequences for infertile women consumers.     

Effects of equal credit opportunity legislation in consumer finance lending

The objective of equal credit opportunity legislation (ECOL) is to eradicate discrimination against women and minority groups in the nation's consumer credit markets. Whether ECOL is successful and “benefits” such consumers is an empirical issues. Also, the “costs” of ECOL, if any, must be assayed. This article discusses these and related issues concerning the impact of ECOL. Against this background empirical findings from a nationwide consumer finance company are reviewed and implications for public policy are drawn.     

欧盟消费者法对商业创新的法律影响力评析

欧盟主要施行的消费者法和相关指令强调的是不仅保护消费者也鼓励竞争和支持创新。法律在竞争性的市场中应为消费者的保护提供一个基本的框架,即"授权"给消费者,让消费者愿意也能够在市场上对商品和服务进行选择,并且根据对商品和服务的质量和安全性的合理预期而确立起足够充分的消费者信心,而其中消费者法对实现这样的目标应该起到基础和关键性的作用。     

The Future of Digital Communication Research: Considering Dynamics and Multimodality

Digital communication, the electronic transmission of information, reflects and influences consumers’ perceptions, attitudes, behaviors, and shopping journeys. Thus, data stemming from digital communication is an important source of insights for retailers, manufacturers, and service firms alike. This article discusses emerging trends and recent advances in digital communication research, as well as its future opportunities for retail practice and research. The authors outline four consumer–retailer domains relevant to digital communication, which in turn frame their discussion of the properties of communication dynamics (e.g., trends, variations) within messages, communicators, and their interaction, as well as communication multimodality (i.e., numeric heuristics, text, audio, image, and video). These factors are critical for understanding and predicting consumers’ behaviors and market developments. Furthermore, this article delineates conceptual and methodological challenges for researchers working in contexts that feature dynamics and multimodality. Finally, this article proposes an agenda for continued research, with the goal of stimulating further efforts to unlock the “black boxes” of digital communication and gain insights into both consumers and markets.     

Verbraucherschutz als Teil der Marktordnung

In market orders, consumer protection is a necessary complement to competition policy in order to secure competition on the merits and the functioning of markets. Insights from behavioural economics show that disclosure obligations may not help boundedly rational consumers and that the standard paradigm of the “responsible and sovereign consumer” has to be modifi ed. “Nudging” and “debiasing” may be instrumental in preserving market freedom, while at the same time helping consumers to achieve desired results.     

The economics of professional services: lemon markets, credence goods, and C2C information sharing

We discuss how professional service markets are plagued by asymmetric information, by looking jointly at the literature stemming from the seminal work of Akerlof on the “market of lemons”, and at the definition of “credence good” which has been developed especially within the field of health economics. Since consumers cannot evaluate ex post the quality of purchased professional services when these are “credence goods”, they cannot rely with 100 % confidence on other consumers’ and experts’ signals about service providers’ quality. Hence, questions arise on the effectiveness of traditional market features highlighted in literature as market-enhancing when information asymmetry is an issue, namely: advertising, certification, reputation, and liability. Our analysis specifically focuses on consumer-provided knowledge by looking at recent development of Web-based rating and reviewing services. Results point to the fact that consumers in the U.S. heavily rely on such services, and they do so roughly in proportion to their consumption of each professional sector. Therefore, future research on professional services should include a “C2C search technology” when modeling consumer behaviors that allows to define how much each professional service is to be considered as pure or hybrid “credence good.”     

Some people just want to read: The roles of age,interactivity, and perceived usefulness of print in the consumption of digital information products

With the advent of digital technologies, both academic researchers and marketing practitioners alike continually seek a richer understanding of the way information is produced and consumed. Against this backdrop, this study explores the relationship between interactivity, consumer satisfaction and adoption intention in the context of digital information products. Drawing broadly on the services marketing literature, interactivity literature and diffusion theory, the results of our study suggest that in a utilitarian context, consumers are more likely to adopt interactive books than more traditional static e-books. However, satisfaction with interactivity is moderated by the age of the consumer, with older “digital immigrant” participants more satisfied by static e-books and younger “digital native” participants more satisfied by interactive e-books. Also, the less useful consumers find print products, the more likely they will be to adopt interactive digital books, and this effect is also moderated by the age of the consumer. Finally, with the proliferation of digital devices only expected to continue, these findings have important implications for both product development and marketing communication programs.     

Editorial

The relationship marketing paradigm is gaining increasing credence in consumer markets. Marketers need to get close to their customers to establish exchange relationships, and this “intimacy” is achieved using database technology and direct marketing communications. However, in implementing relationship marketing in this way, the potential exists for the use of technology to result in invasions of individual consumer privacy. The literature on relationship marketing and privacy are reviewed, and the findings of six exploratory focus group discussions, conducted in the UK, are presented. The study suggests that what some consumers define as “intrusion” is similar to what has been called “intimacy” by marketers. Nine propositions are presented which reflect the implications of current approaches to relationship marketing in consumer markets. In particular, the integral elements of meaningful relationships are absent or inhibited as a result of consumer concerns over intrusions of their privacy. Thus, marketers need to adapt their attitudes, behaviours, and processes in order to accommodate the participation of the consumer in the relationship. The implications for marketers are identified, and directions are offered for future research.     

Trust and the don't‐want‐to‐complain bias in peer‐to‐peer platform markets

This paper addresses peer‐to‐peer (P2P) digital platform markets, often associated with the “sharing economy” or the “collaborative economy”. Such digital platforms, facilitating new purchasing channels for consumers by matching P2P supply and demand, can be considered new market places challenging the conventional markets. How are P2P platform markets evaluated by the consumers? Based on a comprehensive survey‐data material, five different P2P service markets are considered by peer buyers and the results compared to consumers’ evaluations from similar conventional service markets according to trust, comparability and consumers’ satisfaction with the transactions. Comparability seems to be one advantage for the platform markets, while trust could become a problem. Conditions for trust in P2P platform markets is particularly interesting to study because contrary to conventional markets P2P transactions cannot rely on governmental laws, regulations and security net. This trust problem has been solved by a trust‐generating rate and review system. Our data material, however, distinguishes a mechanism that we have coined as the don't‐want‐to‐complain bias. More precisely, people do not like to complain, hence buyers of P2P services often hesitate to give negative ratings when they are discontent with a service or a supplier. Therefore, positive ratings become overestimated. If consumers recognize this bias, ratings and reviews will lose credibility and no longer be considered trustworthy. Eventually, this may threaten the well‐functioning of P2P markets.     

Ethical Consumerism: A View From the Food Industry in Morocco

Both consumers and firms are now more concerned about ethics as a way to make business transactions a win–win deal. As consumers ensure profitability to businesses, they expect fair practices and honest behaviors toward society. The study reported here attempts to investigate Moroccans’ perceptions and attitudes toward ethical consumerism of food. Consumers’ willingness to buy those products and their motives for such purchases as well as factors preventing ethical purchases is investigated. Besides price, which drives most their decision to buy a food or not, Moroccans are driven by ethical claims such as “healthy,” “no fat,” “pasteurized,” etc. It was shown that consumers trust information on the labels of products besides information provided by consumer authorities. In relation to ethical aspects, Moroccans are mostly concerned about the environment and religion. Older men with high income are shown to be a good target for the ethical food market.     

Suchmaschinen unter der Lupe: Informationsherrschaft und ihre Schranken

Informational power by search engines should be analysed from different perspectives. On the one hand, unlimited access to personal data can be in conflict with the interests of individuals whose data can be accessed. These interests are part of a right to privacy, including a “right to be forgotten,” which, however, must be balanced against the public interest in disclosure of information. Balancing these conflicting interests is a difficult task — a task that lies with the search engines themselves. On the other hand, firms and individuals may have an interest in their information to be found, in particular (but not only) for commercial purposes. Suppressing or “downgrading” this information as displayed to users may significantly reduce visibility. In light of these interests, it has been proposed to oblige search engines to implement “search neutrality“; i.e., that they have to present search results in an unbiased way. In this article, we take a clear position against ex ante regulation. Instead, competition law provides a sufficient framework, to protect against the abuse of “informational” market power. We sketch a new approach that may allow competition law to be applied more quickly in dynamic markets such as internet search markets.     

Umweltgefährdung — kein Thema für Verbraucherinformation?

One might assume with a certain degree of confidence that organisations and institutions involved in consumer policies would accord particular significance to the problem area “environment and consumer behaviour,” both in their public activities and in policy making. It might also be expected that they would formulate information policies to exert a positive influence upon the attitudes and behaviour of consumers towards the environment. However, a quantitative content analysis of publications seems to indicate the contrary. Consumer organisations in the Federal Republic of Germany rarely and unevenly inform their public about the interrelated aspects of problems in the area of “environment and consumer behaviour.” New and proposed laws and political events still determine the narrow scope of environmental reports. Information about basic interrelationships between “the environment and consumer behaviour” or about the possible negative environmental effects of increasingly questionable consumer behaviour is rare.     

Consumer Focus in Cross-National Research

This article points out the need for a consumer focus in cross-national research to aid multi-national marketers in developing relevant strategies and executions for each market. Two major constructs are discussed which reinforce the consumer focus. The first construct is “Life Style” research to gain a more human profile of consumers in a market. The underlying theory for “Life Style” research is presented and how the research has been done in over fourteen countries is described. The second major construct in this article are three analytic models for comparing consumers across markets. The three analytic models are (1) Shared cultural norms (2) Segmentation within cultures and (3) Correlates of usage. Illustrative findings of each model are presented.     

Exploring the Legality of Consumer Anti-branding Activities in the Digital Age

The importance of “brand dilution” is changing with the rise in internet-mediated consumer power and increasing consumer involvement in the brand identity and message creation processes. In light of recent legal rulings, this study re-conceptualizes brand dilution as a matter of counter-posed brand meanings and associations in digital markets. Anti-branding dilution cases from both a blurring and a tarnishment dilution basis are examined through consumer interviews. The results show that consumer anti-branding has less potential for brand dilution, and more potential for brand identity collusion. By addressing both legal and marketing views of the meaning systems associated with the dilution versus collusion perspectives, this study provides an approach for understanding anti-branding dilution discussions and a way to develop better functioning branding exchange systems for digital markets. Consequently, possible changes in future branding ownership issues for digital markets are envisioned.     

Designing the content of advertising in a differentiated market

In many markets, consumers use attribute information to assess the value they expect from purchasing a product or service. This includes many low involvement experience goods including take-out food, many packaged good categories and restaurants. In these markets, quality differences exist but many differences are horizontal in nature: the consumer is interested in finding a product that meets her unique tastes. Beyond ensuring that consumers know the brand, the category and the price; it seems advertising should provide consumers with attribute information. However, a significant proportion of advertising does not provide it. In fact, within the same category, competitors respond to messages that emphasize detailed attribute information with messages that are devoid of attribute information. These messages are uninformative about product attributes. We explore how competition in a differentiated market is affected by the ability of a firm has to choose uninformative messages. We construct a model to investigate the factors that affect a firm’s decision to use advertising with detailed attribute information or advertising that does not provide it. The model demonstrates that content decisions about advertising are affected by the differences between products, the range of heterogeneity in consumer tastes and the degree to which costs increase as a function of the quantity of information in advertising. Surprisingly, even when the cost to increase the quantity of information in advertising is low, uninformative campaigns can be more profitable than campaigns with attribute information. The analysis also demonstrates that firms can be more likely to provide attribute information when there are less consumers that are attribute-sensitive. Finally, the model shows that uninformative messages can create “artificial differentiation” in some situations.     

How consumers contribute to the development and continuity of a cultural market

This article examines the “indie” music industry in South Korea. It describes a consumer-led market where network of consumers aided by social media take responsibility for its maintenance and development, specifically the market for indie music in South Korea. With the emergence of digital technology and a participatory culture, the roles of consumers have expanded. Through their commitment and passion for independent music, aided by social media, these consumers have developed a virtual indie music community, which uses a variety of mechanisms, such as producing podcasts, to promote its music. These non-traditional producers regard indie music as an important part of their lives and their existence, which is why they take responsibility for developing the indie community rather than leaving this to a profit-orientated music industry. Therefore, we demonstrate how in South Korea the production of indie music has ceased to be dominated by traditional actors, such as record labels, and is driven by the enthusiasm of music fans. Previous research on cultural markets suggests that consumers play critical roles in the formation and evolution of the market. This study sheds light on this process by depicting a cultural market that is governed by pro-social consumers (rather than anti-market resistance) who pursue a balanced approach between resistance to and negotiated harmony with commercial and social norms rather than drawing a simple boundary between “us” and “other”.     

A Dismal Reality: Behavioural Analysis and Consumer Policy

Before the behavioural turn, the economic account of consumer policy concerns was too optimistic and reductive. After the turn, we, the consumers, are more likely to need from an economic perspective a more intrusive consumer policy. This is the dismality thesis defended in this article. The dismality thesis is a theoretical, comparative, and argumentative thesis, albeit normatively incomplete. It follows from two premises. First, pre-behavioural economics elaborated a restricted theory of consumer harm in unregulated markets (“consumer harm premise”) and, second, it overstated the effectiveness of information disclosure as a means of consumer policy (“institutional premise”). The dismality thesis is further supported by a comparison of the discussion of attributes control in the pre- and post-behavioural turn literature and by commenting on the main source of controversy about attributes control in the post-turn literature, the so-called “artificial truncation” of behavioural analysis.     

Retailer Categorization: How Store-Format Price Image Influences Expected Prices and Consumer Choices

Prior research indicates that consumers may base their retail decisions (e.g., store choice, purchase quantity) on price image, which has been defined as consumer perceptions “of the aggregate price level of a retailer” (Hamilton and Chernev 2013, p. 2). The present research shows that consumers associate different price images not only with specific retailers, but more broadly with various store formats — such as grocery stores, convenience stores, and specialty stores. Six studies provide evidence that store-format price image exerts influence on consumer price expectations and store choice decisions, and that these retailer categorization effects are distinct from the effects of retailer price image.