Consumer education

Consumers today are challenged by growing amounts of information and wider choices of products. To
make good choices in increasingly complex markets, they must develop a greater range of skills and knowledge.
This can be greatly facilitated through improved awareness and education. Consumer education helps the
consumer in many ways in protecting himself from the malpractices of the seller and in making judicious
purchases.
It is important to recognise and understand that consumer education means different things to different
people. For instance, to an ordinary consumer, education is viewed as information to help him/her to make
better choices of goods and services in the market place. A businessperson views consumer education as
activities that assists in selling services and products. A bureaucrat views consumer education as a programme
to complement and supplement laws and regulations that foster trade competition. They believe that healthy
competition and an educated body of consumers will ensure protection for the consumers.
A consumer advocate sees consumer education as providing information to consumers to protect them from
fraudulent trade practices and exploitative market operation. And an educator sees consumer education as
development of skills and knowledge that assist consumers to play their role effectively in the market place. All
in all, consumer education is viewed by all consumers as the process by which people learn the workings of
the marketplace so that they can improve their ability to act as purchasers or consumers of those
products and services they deem most likely to enhance their well being.
Consumer education is often provided by several governmental agencies, as well as by regional and
local authorities. Non-governmental entities, including consumer organizations, teachers and parents
associations and other civil society groups, also play a major role in consumer education. Consumer protection
involves the implementation of measures that:

prevent irregularities or transactions which have negative impact on consumers;

empower consumers to exercise informed choices and select value-for-money goods and services;

provide fair access to basic goods and services and open avenues to address consumer interests and
concerns.

In order to safeguard consumer interest, there are six consumer rights:

Right to Safety - protection from hazardous goods;
Right to Information - availability of information required for weighing alternatives, and protection
from false and misleading claims in advertising and labeling practices;

Right to Choice - availability of competing goods and services that offer alternatives
in terms of price, quality, service;

Right to be Heard - assurance that government will take full cognizance of the concerns of consumers,
and will act with sympathy and dispatch through statutes and simple and
expeditious administrative procedures;

Right to Seek redressal - right to seek redressal against unfair trade practices;

Right to Consumer Education - acquire the knowledge and skill to be an informed consumer
throughout life.

To conclude, consumer education is necessary to develop living skills in the individual as well as his/her
role in society. The right to consumer education is one of the basic consumer rights. This right to consumer

education incorporates the rights to knowledge and skills for taking action to influence factors that affect the
final analysis of consumer decision-making.

Questions
1. Are there any measures, dealing with the consumer education, that have been taken in your
country?
In Romania, have been founded non-governmental consumer associations to comply with consumers
needs in Romania. Those ONG put a lot of effort in informing and educating consumers about their
rights, giving advice, mediating complaints, making local studies and tests, campaigning in the areas of
food, health, financial education and environment and others.
2. Which are the consumer rights that are not respected in your country?
We are facing a vicious circle in which the producers take advantage of the consumers lack of
information and attitude regarding their rights and the consumers, lacking an appropriate instruction
remain only at a discontent level, not trusting the possibility of their rights observance, which in turn
determines a low level of selfprotection.
3. What kind of measures concerning consumer education need to be taken in your country?
The real change should come from a sustained consumers education, but also from that of the producers
regarding the quality, the safety of the marketed products, from the attitude towards the producers/sellers
disobedience for the rules in this filed, all doubled by the authorities increased interest for the consumers
protection and a display of individual or associative civic spirit.