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Consumers buying fruit in Nanjing, China



Consumer choice

“Consumers, by definition, include us all," President John F. Kennedy offered his definition to the United States Congress on March 15, 1962. This speech became the basis for the creation of World Consumer Rights Day, now celebrated on March 15. In his speech, JFK outlined the integral responsibility to consumers from their respective governments to help exercise consumers' rights, including: [1]

Economics and marketing

A consumer is one that buys good for consumption and not for resale or commercial purpose. The consumer is an individual who pays some amount of money for the thing required to consume goods and services. As such, consumers play a vital role in the economic system of a nation. Without consumer demand, producers would lack one of the key motivations to produce: to sell to consumers. The consumer also forms part of the chain of distribution.

Recently in marketing instead of marketers generating broad demographic profiles and Fisio-graphic profiles of market segments, marketers have started to engage in personalised marketing, permission marketing, and mass customisation. [2]

Largely due to the rise of the Internet, consumers are shifting more and more towards becoming prosumer, consumers who are also producers (often of information and media on the social web), influence the products created (e.g. by customisation, crowdfunding or publishing their preferences), actively participate in the production process, or use interactive products. [3] [4] [5]

Law and politics

The law primarily uses a notion of the consumer in relation to consumer protection laws, and the definition of consumer is often restricted to living persons (i.e. not corporations or businesses) and excludes commercial users. [6] A typical legal rationale for protecting the consumer is based on the notion of policing market failures and inefficiencies, such as inequalities of bargaining power between a consumer and a business. [7] As all potential voters are also consumers, consumer protection has a clear political significance.

Concern over the interests of consumers has spawned consumer activism, where organized activists do research, education and advocacy to improve the offer of products and services. Consumer education has been incorporated into some school curricula. [8] [ citation needed ] There are also various non-profit publications, such as Which? , Consumer Reports and Choice magazine , dedicated to assist in consumer education and decision making.

In India, the Consumer Protection Act 1986 differentiates the consummation of a commodity or service for personal use or to earn a livelihood. Only consumers are protected per this act and any person, entity or organization purchasing a commodity for commercial reasons are exempted from any benefits of this act. [9]

See also

Related Research Articles


Consumerism is a social and economic order that encourages an acquisition of goods and services in ever-increasing amounts. With the industrial revolution, but particularly in the 20th century, mass production led to overproduction—the supply of goods would grow beyond consumer demand, and so manufacturers turned to planned obsolescence and advertising to manipulate consumer spending. In 1899, a book on consumerism published by Thorstein Veblen, called The Theory of the Leisure Class, examined the widespread values and economic institutions emerging along with the widespread "leisure time" in the beginning of the 20th century. In it Veblen "views the activities and spending habits of this leisure class in terms of conspicuous and vicarious consumption and waste. Both are related to the display of status and not to functionality or usefulness."

Distribution (marketing) making products available to customers

Distribution is one of the four elements of the marketing mix. Distribution is the process of making a product or service available for the consumer or business user who needs it. This can be done directly by the producer or service provider, or using indirect channels with distributors or intermediaries. The other three elements of the marketing mix are product, pricing, and promotion.

Direct marketing type of marketing sending messages directly to consumers

Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. By contrast, advertising is of a mass-message nature.

Consumer behaviour determinants of consumer behaviour

Consumer behaviour is the study of individuals, groups, or organizations and all the activities associated with the purchase, use and disposal of goods and services, including the consumer's emotional, mental and behavioural responses that precede or follow these activities. Consumer behaviour emerged in the 1940s and 50s as a distinct sub-discipline in the marketing area.

A prosumer is a person who consumes and produces a product. The term is derived from prosumption, a dot-com era business term meaning "production by consumers". These terms were coined in 1980 by American futurist Alvin Toffler, and were widely used by many technology writers of the time. The term has since come to refer to a person using commons-based peer production. Technological breakthrough has fastened the development of prosumption. With the help of additive manufacturing techniques, for example, co-creation takes place at different production stages: design, manufacturing and distribution stages. It also takes place between individual customers, leading to co-design communities. Similarly, mass customisation is often associated with the production of tailored goods or services on a large scale production. This increase in participation has flourished following the increasing popularity of Web 2.0 technologies, such as Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. This rise in user participation blurs the line between production and consumption activities, with the consumer becoming a prosumer.


Country of origin country of manufacture, production, or growth where an article or product comes from

Country of origin (COO), is the country of manufacture, production, or growth where an article or product comes from. There are differing rules of origin under various national laws and international treaties. Country of origin labelling is also known as place-based branding, the made-in image or the "nationality bias." In some regions or industries, country of origin labelling may adopt unique local terms such as terroir used to describe wine appellations based on the specific region where grapes are grown and wine manufactured.

Information privacy law or data protection laws prohibit the disclosure or misuse of information about private individuals. Over 80 countries and independent territories, including nearly every country in Europe and many in Latin America and the Caribbean, Asia, and Africa, have now adopted comprehensive data protection laws. The European Union has the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), in force since May 25, 2018. The United States is notable for not having adopted a comprehensive information privacy law, but rather having adopted limited sectoral laws in some areas.

Canadian trademark law provides protection to marks by statute under the Trade-marks Act and also at common law. Trademark law provides protection for distinctive marks, certification marks, distinguishing guises, and proposed marks against those who appropriate the goodwill of the mark or create confusion between different vendors' goods or services. A mark can be protected either as a registered trade-mark under the Act or can alternately be protected by a common law action in passing off.


On March 15, 1962, President John F. Kennedy presented a speech to the United States Congress in which he extolled four basic consumer rights, later called the Consumer Bill of Rights. The United Nations through the United Nations Guidelines for Consumer Protection expanded these into eight rights, and thereafter Consumers International adopted these rights as a charter and started recognizing March 15 as World Consumer Rights.

Food marketing

Food marketing brings together the food producer and the consumer through a chain of marketing activities.

The market environment or business environment is a marketing term and refers to factors and forces that affect a firm's ability to build and maintain successful customer relationships. The business environment has been defined as "the totality of physical and social factors that are taken directly into consideration in the decision-making behaviour of individuals in the organisation."


The concept of the informed consumer is a fundamental one in the law of the European Union. Since the general Resolution of 1975, one of the primary objectives of the European Community, and then the European Union, has been the provision of information to consumers. The rationale is that market actors who are informed and have a greater capacity to understand the importance of their market actions and choices, and are enabled in making better choices.

The Australian Consumer Laws (ACL), being Schedule 2 to the Competition and Consumer Act 2010, is uniform legislation for consumer protection, applying as a law of the Commonwealth of Australia and is incorporated into the law of each of Australia's states and territories. The law commenced on 1 January 2011, replacing 20 different consumer laws across the Commonwealth and the states and territories, although certain other Acts continue to be in force.

Consumer Protection Act, 1986 Legislation in toy

The Consumer Protection Act, 1986 (COPRA) is an Act of the Parliament of India enacted in 1986 to protect the interests of consumers in India. It is replaced by The Consumer Protection Act 2019. It is made for the establishment of consumer councils and other authorities for the settlement of consumer's grievances and matters connected therewith it. The act was passed in Assembly in October 1986 and came into force on December 24, 1986. The statute on the right was made before this COPRA act

In Canada, passing off is both a common law tort and a statutory cause of action under the Canadian Trade-marks Act referring to the deceptive representation or marketing of goods or services by competitors in a manner that confuses consumers. The law of passing off protects the goodwill of businesses by preventing competitors from passing off their goods as those of another.

Cloud marketing

Cloud marketing is the process of an organisations efforts to market their goods and services online through integrated digital experiences, by which they are specialised for every single end user. The aim is to use advertising methods to target customers via online applications through social media websites such as Facebook, Twitter and various online portals to target consumers. Cloud marketing platforms are supported with third parties which maintain the platform. Cloud Marketing was established by a company in Raleigh, North Carolina calling it SharedVue Marketing Technologies. The marketers targeting clients need to ensure their material is compatible with all electronic media devices. Cloud marketing requires efforts in data privacy and data protection especially for EU markets where GDPR general data protection regulation defines new rules.

The concept is a merit good introduced in 1998 economics by Richard Musgrave is a commodity which is judged that an individual or society should have on the basis of some concept of need, rather than ability and willingness to pay. The term is, perhaps, less often used today than it was in the 1960s to 1980s but the concept still lies behind many economic actions by governments which are not performed specifically for financial reasons or by supporting incomes. Examples include in-kind transfers such as the provision of food stamps to support nutrition, the delivery of health services to improve quality of life and reduce morbidity, subsidized housing and education.


  1. "Special message to Congress on protecting consumer interest, 15 March 1962". John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum.
  3. Gunelius, Susan (3 July 2010). "The Shift from Consumers to PROsumers". Forbes. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  4. Scammell, Margaret. "Citizen Consumers: towards a new marketing of politics?" (PDF). p. 6. Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  5. Prosumer Revisited . Retrieved 2 July 2016.
  8. L. Gayle Royer (1980). "The Value of Consumer Education in Increasing Effective Consumer Performance: Theory and Research". Advances in Consumer Research. 07: 203-206. Retrieved 24 January 2020.
  9. "Consumer vs Customer". Archived from the original on 2010-04-06. Retrieved 2010-03-10. The consumer protection act 1986 of India, is a little more generous with the word 'Consumer'. According to this law, a consumer is not only a person who uses the product for domestic personal use, but also one who uses the product to earn his daily livelihood.