Informed Choices
4.1 Access to Information
4.1.1 People can and should be empowered to make their own decisions and choices, with proper access to relevant information. Businesses and service providers who are not prepared to provide easily understandable and accessible information on their products should be treated with suspicion.
4.1.2 Information requirements are becoming more and more common, be it labelling (e.g. nutritional information), standard information sheets for loans, or information requirements for consumer contracts (such as details on the right of withdrawal).
4.1.3 There is already considerable legislation in this area, primarily regarding product labelling, certification, health and safety. However the effectiveness of information requirements needs careful monitoring. Too much information can sometimes lead to the same result as not enough – so clarity and ease-of-use may be the key here. There have been calls for proper testing of standard information with consumers as part of the legislative process. We also need to accommodate the wide range of languages we have in the EU.
4.1.4 We would like to see a renewed consensus on labelling and certification protocols which deal with the product’s health risks, origins, manufacture and true environmental impact.
4.1.5 We also need to ensure that information is provided in such a way as to be accessible and understandable by the most vulnerable groups in society
4.2 Environmental Impacts
4.2.1 Promoting changes in behaviour, including by consumers, is an important way of tackling climate change. According to the CBI, consumers influence one quarter of all carbon emissions through their shopping baskets. If consumers are empowered to demand low carbon goods and products, more competition to provide low carbon solutions will be created. Check-Out Carbon (2008), a report by Forum for the Future, highlighted the importance of opportunities that exist to reduce carbon emissions as a result of consumer purchasing.
4.2.2 More than ever before, consumers want to “go green”. Tesco has found that 80 per cent of its customers consider the environmental impact of what they buy. New research by the Climate Group shows that, despite the recession, UK consumers are becoming more committed to making changes to their lifestyles in order to tackle climate change. To achieve this consumers need better and clearer information. Forum for the Future’s research revealed that more than eight consumers in ten want more information about the environmental impacts of the products they buy.
4.2.3 Carbon labelling is a vitally important tool in enabling consumers to buy environmental products and helping to reduce carbon in consumer purchases. The labels used on refrigerators, for example, have been effective at raising awareness among consumers and promoting more efficient product design. Forum for the Future found that consumers want to be able to trust retailers not to supply products that harm the environment. At the moment, however, not enough information on carbon foot-printing is available.
4.3 Financial Consequences
4.3.1 Often, consumers are not fully aware of the financial commitment they make when entering into a contract. These can include not just capital and financing costs, but future maintenance and operating costs of product and services purchased (e.g. replacement razor blades and printer cartridges!). The Financial Services Authority is doing good work here in providing easily understood advice on complex financial products such as mortgages and savings instruments. However, often many other products and services have financial implications too.
4.4 Contractual Terms of Provision
4.4.1 Related to financial consequences, there is a more general need to ensure all contractual terms and obligations are understood by the consumer (and, indeed, the counterparty). The “fine print” can hide a myriad of detail – much of which is not considered by the consumer prior to entering into an agreement. Consumers are often not aware of their “statutory rights”, which follow from their paying for a supplier for goods or services.
4.4.2 Consumers need to be made aware of their rights under all consumer legislation and their avenues of redress. This must apply to public service providers as well as to the private sector. Often the recipients of public services are the most vulnerable and excluded. It may be that a gulf is growing between the informed (e.g. in health, the so-called “worried well”) and those who are deprived of their rights through lack of knowledge, communication skills or access.
4.5 Corporate Responsibility
4.5.1 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is now a standard discipline within any sizable business. Firms recognise both the obligation and value of helping to sustain and improve society. This requires high standards of business behaviour that endure through all activities and relationships with their various stakeholders, including employees, suppliers, customers and the communities on which they impact (including fair trading). But the benefits of CSR can only be fully realised if customers have the right and the ability to know about the CSR records of the organisation they are dealing with.
Questions
- What information should retailers, manufacturers and service providers be obliged to give? And where and when should this information be held / presented?
- What is the appropriate role for consumer-led review websites; and the internet in general?
- In all areas, how can information be best supplied to the most vulnerable groups in society?
- How can we equip people to be more assertive, knowledgeable and engaged consumers?
- What can government do to improve carbon labelling and make it more widely available?
- What other steps can government take to promote environmentally-friendly purchasing? Should environmentally damaging products be phased out? Which ones, and how?
- Whose responsibility should it be to ensure that consumers understand the long term financial commitment (e.g. a stream of future, potentially variable, payments) involved in a purchase?
- How can we ensure that contractual terms of provision are clear, easily understood and fair?
- How can we improve the communication of complex consumer protection legislation, so that consumers know what they are entitled to?
- How can companies’ CSR performance be sensibly conveyed to their respective customers?
