The standpoint of consumer protection on marketing communication tools in the light of unfair commercial practices

Abstract

AIMS OF THE STUDY
The aim of consumer protection is the restoration of this asymmetric situation between the actors of the market by the protection of consumers, their empowerment with the ability to make reasonably well-informed and circumspect decisions, by the regulation of the enterprises’ activities, as well as by the sanctioning of non-compliant, ‘unfair’ actors. Concerning the empowerment of consumers, providing them with the right to obtain proper information is of paramount importance, constituting one of the main pillars of consumer protection. In relation to that, in this paper I seek to find the answer to the following question: ’What are the typical tools of unfair commercial practices, and how their perception is influenced by the mode of transmitting information and the characteristics of the products?’.

METHODS
In order to explore the circumstances and underlying reasons of the enterprises’ non-compliant commercial practices (violating consumers’ economic interests and their rights for information), a content analysis of the Hungarian Competition Authority’s resolutions has been conducted. As part of the research on unfair commercial practices against certain consumer groups, the communication tools, advertising claims, information contents and the modes of displaying information were examined. Beyond these, the enterprises’ consciousness (when launching their advertising campaigns), as well as the consumers’ supposed behavioural and decision-making patterns (in the case of a given product group) were also investigated.

RESULTS
Based on the results of this qualitative research, recently there has been realignment among the tools used in unfair commercial practices, since newly emerged channels come to the fore which do not pose limits in terms of the range of information provided to consumers. In the case of certain groups of products, however, the more information provided by these tools might not necessarily contribute to better decision-making either. At the same time, new advertising techniques also emerge, for
which neither the enterprises nor the authorities have established practices at the moment. Hence, implementing changes in the regulatory system might be an actual task as well.

PROPOSALS
Enterprises need to pay particular attention to the information-transmission capacity of various marketing communication tools (determined by their temporal and spatial constraints), as the same kind of commercial communication is considered non-compliant via one communication channel, whereas via another one it is not.