Consumer Protection
Consumer protection refers to the laws and regulations designed to safeguard consumers from unfair or deceptive business practices. It aims to ensure that consumers have access to accurate information, fair treatment, and recourse in case of product or service issues. Consumer protection measures often include product safety standards, truth in advertising requirements, and mechanisms for resolving consumer complaints.
5 Key excerpts on "Consumer Protection"
eBook - ePubConsumer Theories of Harm
An Economic Approach to Consumer Law Enforcement and Policy Making
- Paolo Siciliani, Christine Riefa, Harriet Gamper(Authors)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
...4 The Economic Framework Underpinning Consumer Theories of Harm I. Introduction The public enforcement of Consumer Protection rules is primarily aimed at making sure that consumers are treated fairly and not exploited by firms. This entails that consumers are not misled by firms, so that they have the confidence to make well-informed choices. Confident consumers are, in turn, believed to be instrumental in maintaining a healthy competitive process whereby those firms that best satisfy consumer needs can thrive. Conversely, Consumer Protection enforcement also indirectly protects compliant firms from firms that instead resort to unfair practices and contract terms (later on, simply practices), thus preserving the former’s incentives to compete on the merits. 1 Consumer Protection and competition policy can therefore be seen as complementary. 2 This is particularly the case when consumers generally lack experience of shopping around (such as in recently liberalised industries), 3 or lack expertise and familiarity with the product in question (for example, professional services which are not purchased repeatedly, such as conveyancing). In other words, the process of competition rivalry is undermined when consumers lack the confidence to vote with their feet. Therefore, a high standard of Consumer Protection is an essential enabler of robust competition. Under this mainstream approach, consumer policy intervention often takes the form of disclosure requirements, aimed at providing consumers with all the information they would need to make a well-informed decision...
eBook - ePubThe Law and Economics of Enforcing European Consumer Law
A Comparative Analysis of Package Travel and Misleading Advertising
- Franziska Weber(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...1 Introduction DOI: 10.4324/9781315556277-1 Context: The Need for Consumer Protection Laws and their Enforcement The starting point for an economic analysis of consumer law enforcement is the existence of markets for consumer goods. Economic theory illustrates how these markets work. In perfectly working markets, no legal interventions (such as tax laws or subsidies) are necessary, as they can only lead to a reduction of economic efficiency. In economic terms, this situation is called a ‘first-best solution’, which is an ideal situation that does not exist in reality. The real world is full of market distortions and imperfections that necessitate legal intervention through Consumer Protection laws. Legal interventions are referred to as second or third-best solutions. In the 1960s and 1970s, consumer movements strongly favoured strengthening the rights of the weak party, and pure legal literature today still includes the argument that the consumer primarily must be protected from powerful (superior) sellers. Law and economics scholars criticised this reasoning. 1 They analysed Consumer Protection rules in three different, consecutive streams, namely information economics, new institutional economics and behavioural economics. 2 In information economics, the consumer is regarded as exposed to certain constraints due to a lack of information. For instance, the consumer cannot appropriately perceive quality differences. 3 Imperfect information and the resulting information costs prevent the consumer from making an informed choice. This first stream shows how information affects people’s ability to make choices, and, consequently, how an improvement in the information flow can solve problems in markets. Solutions do not necessarily have to come from governmental intervention, but can be achieved by internal market mechanisms. 1 See G.K. Hadfield, R. Howse and M.J...
eBook - ePub- Geraint Howells, Stephen Weatherill(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Perception of this gap between theory and practice stimulates the debate about the role of law as a means of intervening in the market. Chapters 3 – 6 examined aspects of the private law of Consumer Protection, where the State supplements the market by offering legal protection for the consumer interest. This occurs in respect of both machinery guaranteeing the legal enforceability of standards agreed between the parties and, of broader general importance, the imposition of minimum standards within transactions that apply independently of the consumer’s ability to negotiate them. Chapters 7 – 11 examined the scope of public regulation of the market in the consumer interest. A range of practices are suppressed by law, partly as a result of the perception that the market system, supported by the private law, proves inadequate to yield efficient and/or fair outcomes. This chapter, as already mentioned above, concentrates on the ‘supply side’ – on reasons why producers and suppliers may be immunised from the discipline of competition and the need to satisfy the consumer. As a general observation one may suppose that, in the absence of effective competition between producers and suppliers, the consumer interest will be damaged. The ‘invisible hand’ will be ill-directed where weakness in the competitive process renders the producer and supplier insensitive to consumer wishes. Competition law is motivated by the objective of improving the functioning of the market as a whole. The consumer on the ‘demand-side’ should reap the benefits of an efficiently functioning ‘supply-side’. Like laws forbidding the supply of unsafe products, competition policy is directed at the suppression of practices on the ‘supply-side’ that the market system, supported by private law, cannot root out unaided. However, because competition laws are addressed at commercial parties, their analysis has for too long been left out of account by consumer lawyers...
eBook - ePub- Jacqueline Martin, Chris Turner, Virginia Birch, Virginia Birch(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 1 I NTRODUCTION TO Consumer Protection 1.1 I NTRODUCTION 1. Consumers are protected by both civil and criminal law. 2. The general law of contract gives some protection, especially from misrepresentation (see Chapter 2). 3. There are special rules for consumer contracts. These include: contracts for buying goods (see Chapter 3); contracts for services (see Chapter 6); distance selling (see Chapter 5); other specialist area such as package holidays, insurance, food and finance. 4. The tort of negligence gives limited protection where the consumer has no contractual rights (see Chapter 7). 5. There is protection from defective goods under the Consumer Protection Act 1987 (see Chapter 11). 6. The criminal law gives protection against such matters as false trade descriptions (see Chapter 12) and misleading prices (see Chapter 13). 7. Consumer finance is protected (see Chapter 14). 8. The Office of Fair Trading has powers in respect of adverse consumer practices. 1.2 T HE NEED FOR Consumer Protection 1. Contract law is generally based on the freedom of the individual to make whatever contract he wishes. 2. In consumer law it used to be thought that no one supplier or producer could dominate the market and so competition would keep prices and quality reasonable. 3. However, in consumer contracts it is recognised that, in...
eBook - ePub- Gunnar Trumbull(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Harvard University Press(Publisher)
...Consumer legislation tends to be complex, is often arcane, and yet has a direct and occasionally dramatic impact on producers and distributors. These traits should have made it a difficult area for quick legislative victories against the concentrated interests of industry. Nonetheless, within a decade of the publishing of Unsafe at Any Speed, the legal and regulatory environment for consumers had been radically transformed. It is this sort of rapid policy response to diffuse material interest that requires explanation. Figure 2.1. Number of newspaper articles about Consumer Protection by year, 1950–1990. The record of newspaper articles in the United States also emphasizes the political logic of Consumer Protection policies. Reporting on Consumer Protection during the 1960s exhibits a strong cyclicality. The two-year cycles, with peaks on even years, match high levels of activity with congressional election years. A review of the content of these articles shows that the bulk of reporting did indeed relate to new legislative proposals. This suggests that there was an electoral logic to supporting Consumer Protection policies. Moreover, that electoral logic emerged rapidly, at least four years before the Kennedy “Consumer Bill of Rights” speech. Nor does this cyclicality seem to reflect partisan bias. The election-year bias persisted into the Nixon administration. And it is reflected in the publishing record of both the New York Times and the (less voluble and more conservative) Wall Street Journal. Interestingly, the pattern breaks down by the 1980s. If anything, election years in this later period receive lower Consumer Protection coverage. Strikingly absent from the postwar U.S. Consumer Protection debates was a good-faith effort by industry to reach out directly to consumer advocates in order to make a separate peace that would allow regulators to take a step back. One reason for this failing may have been the legacy of an earlier effort by U.S...
