By and large, liberalized and competitive socioeconomic settings in any given country can create new and greater needs and expectations among consumers. Besides, consumers worldwide expect the greater technological advancements of our time to enable business entities to create and/or deliver goods and services of higher quality at lower costs and prices.
Unless they are satisfactorily met, these changing consumer needs and expectations can very easily culminate in what is referred to as “consumerism” – that is, a movement evoked by a desire to augment the rights and powers of buyers in relation to those of producers and sellers.
Moreover, consumers, like all other members of modern society, expect managers, administrators and entrepreneurs to conduct the operations of their organizations in ways that have negligible or no potential to exacerbate the already alarming depreciation of the quality of the natural environment, and to create products that have minimum negative impacts on the very fragile ecosystem upon which humanity’s future is substantively dependent.
The Basic Rights of Consumers
A positive response to the issues of consumerism by business entities and their executives is to honor the following basic rights of consumers, some of which are guaranteed by law in some countries:
(a) The right to safety from product-related hazards.
(b) The right to make choices from a variety of products in a market that is free from domination by monopolistic producers or sellers. Logically, this should include the right to decide to buy, or not to buy, available goods and/or services without government coercion – such as mandatory automobile insurance – or any other form of compulsion.
(c) The right to be heard in governmental decision making that affects consumers.
(d) The right to information about the nature and ingredients or composition of products.
(e) The right to redress, and to reject unsatisfactory product offerings.
(f) The right to education regarding product usage.
(g) The right to the satisfaction of basic needs through access to essential goods and services, including food, clothing, healthcare, education, and sanitation.
(h) The right to a healthy environment—that is, an environment in which one can live and/or work without sacrificing one’s wellbeing, or the wellbeing of future generations.
A Growing Disconnect Between Promises and Practice
Over several decades of proclamations by business organizations and their executives worldwide that they are customer-oriented have passed by, but consumer dissatisfaction has continued to be on the increase. The following is Peter Drucker’s contribution to this criticism:
“That after … [decades] of marketing rhetoric consumerism could become a powerful popular movement proves that not much marketing has been practiced. Consumerism is the shame of marketing.”
Historical Milestones in Consumer Rights
Recognition of the basic rights of consumers can be traced to March 15, 1962 when the Bill for Consumer Rights was considered by the U.S. Congress. In his speech to the Congress on this day, the late President John F. Kennedy accorded American consumers the following rights:
- The right to safety
- The right of choice among competing products
- The right to information about products
- The right to be heard
Consumers International (formerly known as the International Organization of Consumer Unions) later proposed the four additional rights of consumers cited earlier and, in 1982, decided to observe March 15 as the World Consumer Rights Day, beginning from 1983.
(By the way, March 15 is not observed in the United States in spite of its American origin.)
In April 1985, the United Nations General Assembly recognized the fundamental rights of consumers by adopting what is referred to as the “Guidelines for Consumer Protection.”
Avoiding Legal Liability
In addition to the need to honor the rights of consumers, executives particularly need to avoid business-related activities and practices that are likely to embroil them in product liability lawsuits.
A prudent strategy in this endeavor is to at least comply with all the laws that are designed to place a legal obligation on suppliers of products to compensate buyers of their products who may suffer damages and/or injuries occasioned by such factors as poor design and inadequate or misleading information about the operation or uses of the products involved.
Disclaimer:
This article has benefitted greatly from the following sources:
Drucker, Peter F., Management: Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 64–65
Kyambalesa, Henry, New Management and Marketing Concepts and Tenets, Manuscript (2025), pp. 45–46, and 177
Kotler, Peter, “What Consumerism Means to Marketeers,” Harvard Business Review, May-June 1972, p. 49
Times of Zambia, “Consumers Have Rights,” March 18, 1987, p. 4
CUTS Center for Consumer Action Research and Training (CART), “Consumer Rights … and Responsibilities,” www.cuts-international.org/, March 25, 2005
Queensland Government Gateway—Department of Tourism, Racing and Fair Trading: “World Consumer Rights and Responsibilities,” http://www.fair-trading.qld.gov.au/
Frederick, W.C. et al., Business and Society: Corporate Strategy, Public Policy, Ethics, Sixth Edition (New York, 1988), pp. 266–267
Kyambalesa, Henry, International Business: Social Demands, Challenges and Imperatives (Fremont, California, 2004), p. 100
