<p>A customer pays gladly for the wanted product or service. In tandem, no marketer should kill the goose laying golden eggs; he is there to make money. In demand-supply matrix, the supplier-consumer duo befittingly complements each other’s need leading to win-win situation. Yet the two are frequently at loggerheads, with consumers increasingly threatening or suing the supplier or producer for justice. Advice of widely quoted Michael LeBoeuf and other management gurus to suppliers, of treating customers like lifetime partners, often falls on deaf ears.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Not long back, consumers had limited options in buying products and services. The supplier doled out to consumers whatever he wanted like in cooking oil the ruling brands were Dalda or Rath, in detergents Surf (it remained synonymous with washing powder for decades), in bathing soaps Lux or Lifebuoy, in cars Fiat or Ambassador etc. The state-monopolised service sector left no alternative for the consumer.<br /><br />Over years, consumers’ affluence and consequent urge for variety and quality led the profit-driven markets to offer multiple textures, designs, colours and features in products and permutations in services. Numerous fragrances are now available even in such mundane item as washing cakes. <br /><br />Unlike a passive recipient of products and services in supplier monopoly era, the awakened co-nsumer has now on his side consumer forum and access to media to voice grievances. Now the vigilant consumers ascertain the weight, price, expiry date and ingredients of edible products.<br /><br />Most enterprises focus on immediate returns and quantity of profit, thus failing to develop a loyalty base lasting for generations. In book trade, apropos the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary, the perennial demand of this classic lexicon is due to the huge efforts behind it being continually updated by an exclusive full time editorial team. <br /><br />In contrast, we don’t have even a satisfactory dictionary of the largest spoken language of India – Hindi – because the instinct of quick gain by printing few copies for assured sales to libraries overrides the thought of long gestation venture.<br /><br />Cashing on customers’ habit of procuring things they never need and use, many suppliers indulge in unethical tactics of appeasing the small affluent class instead of meeting the genuine needs of many. Other unfair practices include over pricing, especially when there is no substitute like recent quadrupling of price of Zika drug by Martin Shkreli-owned firm; compromised quality; suppression of vital facts related to product composition or its potential harms; adulteration; hidden terms governing sales, warranty, etc. <br /><br />Misleading information<br /><br />With a foresight of how low dealers could stoop to maintain the bottom line, way back in 1962 on March 15, then US president John F Kennedy laid the foundation for the Consumer Rights movement with the historical declaration: “If a consu-mer is offered inferior products, if prices are exorbitant, if drugs are unsafe or worthless, if the consumer is unable to choose on an informed basis, then his dollar is wasted, his health and safety may be threatened, and national interest suffers.” <br /><br />Equating rights of consumers with national interest, he set forth rights of safety against the marketing of hazardous goods, access to variety of products and services at competitive prices, protection against fraudulent, deceitful or misleading information, advertising, labelling and being heard in a forum; to these was added the right to consumer education by later president Gerald Ford. <br /><br />It is on that date – March 15 – that Consumers International (CI) with 220+ member organisations in 115 countries organises World Consumer Rights Day. Like last year, the theme this year is again related to health: Antibiotics off the menu. CI and other civil society groups attempt to defeat the unfair practices of suppliers and dissuade over consumption (read over spending). <br /><br />In India, consumerism is rather constrained since basic requirements like water supply, electricity, railways and, to a lar-ge extent, telecommunications are governed by monopoly markets with tariffs and terms set under parliamentary or legislature Acts. Recent nuisance to Indian mobile services consum-ers is that of call drop over which no headway is in the offing. <br /><br />Anti-consumerism is widespread in health sector with patients often subjected to avoidable diagnostic tests and medications while flooding the market with costly brands where low-cost generic drugs can do. <br /><br />It may be difficult for consumers to boycott the unethical products and services as Mahatma Gandhi did in British India with foreign goods, but through collective action, they can force the companies “who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society” as the adman Simon Mainwaring suggested.</p>
<p>A customer pays gladly for the wanted product or service. In tandem, no marketer should kill the goose laying golden eggs; he is there to make money. In demand-supply matrix, the supplier-consumer duo befittingly complements each other’s need leading to win-win situation. Yet the two are frequently at loggerheads, with consumers increasingly threatening or suing the supplier or producer for justice. Advice of widely quoted Michael LeBoeuf and other management gurus to suppliers, of treating customers like lifetime partners, often falls on deaf ears.<br /><br /></p>.<p>Not long back, consumers had limited options in buying products and services. The supplier doled out to consumers whatever he wanted like in cooking oil the ruling brands were Dalda or Rath, in detergents Surf (it remained synonymous with washing powder for decades), in bathing soaps Lux or Lifebuoy, in cars Fiat or Ambassador etc. The state-monopolised service sector left no alternative for the consumer.<br /><br />Over years, consumers’ affluence and consequent urge for variety and quality led the profit-driven markets to offer multiple textures, designs, colours and features in products and permutations in services. Numerous fragrances are now available even in such mundane item as washing cakes. <br /><br />Unlike a passive recipient of products and services in supplier monopoly era, the awakened co-nsumer has now on his side consumer forum and access to media to voice grievances. Now the vigilant consumers ascertain the weight, price, expiry date and ingredients of edible products.<br /><br />Most enterprises focus on immediate returns and quantity of profit, thus failing to develop a loyalty base lasting for generations. In book trade, apropos the authoritative Oxford English Dictionary, the perennial demand of this classic lexicon is due to the huge efforts behind it being continually updated by an exclusive full time editorial team. <br /><br />In contrast, we don’t have even a satisfactory dictionary of the largest spoken language of India – Hindi – because the instinct of quick gain by printing few copies for assured sales to libraries overrides the thought of long gestation venture.<br /><br />Cashing on customers’ habit of procuring things they never need and use, many suppliers indulge in unethical tactics of appeasing the small affluent class instead of meeting the genuine needs of many. Other unfair practices include over pricing, especially when there is no substitute like recent quadrupling of price of Zika drug by Martin Shkreli-owned firm; compromised quality; suppression of vital facts related to product composition or its potential harms; adulteration; hidden terms governing sales, warranty, etc. <br /><br />Misleading information<br /><br />With a foresight of how low dealers could stoop to maintain the bottom line, way back in 1962 on March 15, then US president John F Kennedy laid the foundation for the Consumer Rights movement with the historical declaration: “If a consu-mer is offered inferior products, if prices are exorbitant, if drugs are unsafe or worthless, if the consumer is unable to choose on an informed basis, then his dollar is wasted, his health and safety may be threatened, and national interest suffers.” <br /><br />Equating rights of consumers with national interest, he set forth rights of safety against the marketing of hazardous goods, access to variety of products and services at competitive prices, protection against fraudulent, deceitful or misleading information, advertising, labelling and being heard in a forum; to these was added the right to consumer education by later president Gerald Ford. <br /><br />It is on that date – March 15 – that Consumers International (CI) with 220+ member organisations in 115 countries organises World Consumer Rights Day. Like last year, the theme this year is again related to health: Antibiotics off the menu. CI and other civil society groups attempt to defeat the unfair practices of suppliers and dissuade over consumption (read over spending). <br /><br />In India, consumerism is rather constrained since basic requirements like water supply, electricity, railways and, to a lar-ge extent, telecommunications are governed by monopoly markets with tariffs and terms set under parliamentary or legislature Acts. Recent nuisance to Indian mobile services consum-ers is that of call drop over which no headway is in the offing. <br /><br />Anti-consumerism is widespread in health sector with patients often subjected to avoidable diagnostic tests and medications while flooding the market with costly brands where low-cost generic drugs can do. <br /><br />It may be difficult for consumers to boycott the unethical products and services as Mahatma Gandhi did in British India with foreign goods, but through collective action, they can force the companies “who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society” as the adman Simon Mainwaring suggested.</p>
