Free markets and fettered consumers (original) (raw)

How to attribute power to consumers? When epistemology and politics converge.

What powers do consumers have to change their behaviours? The answer to that question depends on the definition given of consumers and the attributes that result. But the definition of consumers varies widely from one theoretical model to the next. This paper reviews different models of consumers and analyses the role and powers they supposedly have in the more general framework of the consumer society.

Consumers in Captivity: The Death of Consumer Sovereignty & Rise of Consumer Slavery

International Journal of Business Marketing and Management, 2021

Gone are the days when consumers were kings with unrivalled dominion and unchallenged tastes and preferences. Time has seen consumers willingly or otherwise lose such sovereign and indomitable power in the marketplace and are now captive, on handcuffs of ruthless marketing tactics. Evidence witnessed that consumers are often hoodwinked to procure counterfeits, unhealthy products like junk foods, high caffeine drinks, guns, and brainwashed into relentless addiction. Minors are constantly targeted by advertisers while users of social media platforms live with privacy risks and breaches by their providers that boundlessly retain consumer databases. Indirect taxes often double tax and impoverish consumers worsened by government restrictions and international economic sanctions that breeds scarcity. From such findings, we suggest that there is need to save consumers from themselves and the prevailing ruthless marketing practices to supplement on energies of consumer protection watchdogs. Parents and schools ought to indoctrinate sustainable consumption values into children to curb junk food supply and pointless addictions. Further, United Nations and related bodies should prioritize ordinary consumer plight before approving economic sanctions to save citizens from slavery. Consumers are correspondingly encouraged to rationally appraise market offerings to discard counterfeits and other unhealthy goods instead of complaining while complying.

Is consumerism a private, or public process?

In this paper I will endeavour to answer the question: Is consumerism a private, or public process? Also is it possible that the public concepts of diversity and inequality, are able to be understood and envisioned, through the private act of a consumer, participating within their social life dynamics? I will investigate, examine and analyse these questions, from some observations, which I undertook of an Oxfam retail store and via a literature review process. As a result I will engage in an ethnographical and limited, auto - ethnographical account, to thus present my findings within this essay. In fact I will argue, that in regards to the public issues, of diversity an inequality concepts, it is possible, that individuals can attain an understanding and respect of diversity an inequality concepts, if an individual engages within the private act, of participating within an ethically oriented consumerism process.

Retrospectives: Consumer Sovereignty

Journal of Economic Perspectives, 1993

The term “consumer sovereignty” is usually traced to William Harold Hutt and his 1936 book Economists and the Public: A Study of Competition and Opinion. Hutt paid only passing attention to the maximization of consumer welfare or the achievement of market efficiency. He was stalking different game. For him, the basic issues revolved around the exercise of power in a free society and those issues concerned sovereignty. Why should consumers be given such great power in determining the allocation of resources and the course of production? Hutt's major argument for consumer sovereignty centered on its role in promoting political and social stability. It is unlikely that Hutt's defense of consumer sovereignty will be embraced by the economics profession in the near future. It received only passing attention when first propounded and has largely disappeared from active discussion. Yet I would argue that his approach has a most interesting message.

Public Services and the Consumer: Empowerment or Control?

Social Policy & Administration, 2000

This discussion provides a critical perspective on the growth of consumerism in social policy and public life. Debates around consumer and producer interests are examined before suggesting that a "responsible consumer" has emerged: a service-user increasingly expected to take on a greater role in managing the conditions under which services are provided. It is argued that such consumerism, far from empowering the individual consumer, has served to co-opt service-users into the management of scarcity, rationing, and/or technological change. It is further argued, on the basis of empirical observations in three public service areas, that different groups of people differ in the degree to which they are able, or willing, to take on the new responsibilities of the consumer. This is linked to an outline of how further empirical research may be developed. A typology is offered which seeks to illuminate the act of consumption-including the importance of language, the introduction of technology and the widening physical separation of producer and consumer. It is suggested that the boundaries between producer and consumer responsibility are far from settled. However, as consumers have been expected to take on greater responsibilities, and as the public organization has become more flexible, we have witnessed a process of producer empowerment rather than consumer empowerment.

Protecting Consumers from Themselves: Consumer Law and the Vulnerable Consumer

2015

Attitudes toward consumer protection are shaped primarily by complex assumptions about human nature and its interaction with modern marketing. The dominant perspective governing American consumer law is individualism, a descriptive and frequently normative assumption that places watchdog responsibilities on the individual consumer. This perspective is described and analyzed through an examination of public policy arguments about (1) advertising that targets children, (2) restrictions on consumption of sugared beverages, and (3) creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Board. Individualism is then contrasted with the portrayal of consumers as vulnerable. Specifically, insights from behavioral economics and neuropsychology are used to gain a more accurate starting point for creating consumer protection laws and regulations that reflect respect for consumers as they are, rather than as who they are in deductive rational actor models of market exchange. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Justifications for Intervention in the Marketplace in Favor of Consumer Protection

2010

Economic reality of everyday life places the consumer in an objectively unbalanced report in favor of the producer/trader, even if the first, with his needs, should be both the origin and the final point of production activity. In this context, the present paper contains an analysis of the reasons behind the intervention in the marketplace in favor of consumers. Each