- Meaning: Consumer protection means providing protection against unethical, exploitative and unfair practices of sellers and manufacturers.
- Concept: One of the major reasons for consumer fraud is that consumers are not organized and aware after being cheated or do not have the information to take legal action. Consumer exploitation can be mainly divided into three parts.
(1) Physical and psychological abuse : Consumers feel frustrated or angry due to being sold inferior product or fake product. Improper materials used in the manufacture of the product may also cause bodily harm.
(2) Economic Exploitation: Economic loss to the consumer due to sales made through hoarding or black market or by charging a price higher than the printed selling price of a good or service.
(3) Damage to public interest : While manufacturing many products the environment is polluted due to some of the substances used in them. Thus, public interest is harmed by environmental damage. Meaning of Consumer: According to the Consumer Protection Act, a consumer means a person
One who receives a thing or service in exchange for consideration and for which consideration has been paid or promised
or compensation paid in whole or in part and partly payable in future or deferred payment
May be part of the plan. A consumer includes a person who uses the good or service with the buyer’s permission but does not include a person who purchases it for resale or commercial purposes.”
- Importance of Consumer Protection: The agenda of consumer protection is broad. The task is not only to make consumers aware of their rights and responsibilities but also to ensure that their genuine grievances are properly redressed. Merely protecting consumers legally by implementing various laws cannot fulfill the task of consumer protection. Consumers also have to get organised, establish consumer protection forums at various levels to protect their interests and promote consumer protection.
Business units are also getting involved in the task of customer protection realizing its importance. Business units are also seen making sincere efforts to maximize customer satisfaction and protect customers against fraud.
(A) Importance of Consumer Protection from the View Point of Business:
(1) Utilization of society’s resources: When any business uses society’s resources for its initiation and development, the business has an obligation to provide products or services to society that are useful to society and increase the well-being of society’s resources. Become a doer.
(2) Social Responsibility : It has been proved that business has social responsibility towards various groups having interest in the business. Revenue in business is through sales: and sales are to customers. Thus customers are also an important stakeholder group in business. As with other interest groups, responsibilities to customers must also be faithfully fulfilled by the business unit.
(3) A part of society : Any business is a part of society. Each business becomes a customer of another business in another economic transaction. If consumer exploitation is inevitable then everyone is destined to be exploited. Therefore, every business should adopt a policy of increasing customer confidence in its business and avoid customer exploitation.
(4) Impact on society: Business has an impact on society. Advertising has an effect on the habits, habits, housing, ideology, food and drink matters, ways of wearing clothes etc. of the people of the society. It is for this reason that the moral responsibility of keeping the business policy right in the interests of the society is justified.
(5) Business Interest in Protection of Consumers: Business units have come to consider protection of consumer interests as essential for realizing their own business interests. A basic condition of a competitive market is that the business reaches out to customers, knowing their wants or needs. If a manufacturer does not accept this, consumers will buy from their competitors. Thus, it is in the interest of the business to protect the consumer and proceed in business according to what the manufacturer perceives to be his wish or demand. A satisfied customer not only makes repeat purchases but also communicates his satisfaction with the product to various social groups associated with him which attracts more new customers to the store.
(6) Principle of Trusteeship and Consumer Protection: According to the principle of guardianship (Trusteeship) of Gandhiji, the wealth given to him by the society should be used for the individuals of the society. For customers, Gandhi says that “The customer is the most important person in a business. It does not depend on us (entrepreneurs), but we depend on them. It does not interfere with our work but it is the purpose of our work. He is not an outsider of our business but a part of it. But we are not doing him a favor by giving him what he wants.He does us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.”
(B) Importance of Consumer Protection from the View Point of Consumer:
(1) Widespread Exploitation of Consumers : Business units are seen trying to gain more profits by exploiting consumers through unethical and exploitative policies like unsafe products, adulteration, false and misleading advertisements, black market, hoarding. It becomes imperative to protect consumers against such wrong and unreasonable policies of business entities.
(2) Lack of information to consumers : Consumers are not aware of their rights and reliefs available under the law or know but hesitate to take such steps because they are not well informed or misinformed about the legal process in this regard. It is very important to make consumers aware of their rights and at the same time to reach them correct information about the reliefs available under the law and the legal process required for the same.
(3) Unorganized Consumers : The consumer as an individual may be weak but many consumers can organize themselves and protect their interests very well through their own consumer protection unit. Even in India such consumer protection organizations are functioning but till these consumer protection organizations are very strong it is very necessary to protect the consumers by law.
