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Products related problems of consumer are with prices, quality and weights or volumes of products available in the market. A detailed discussion of the various problems of consumers related to products is discussed here.
- Lack Of Safety And Quality Control Regulations:
Many of the household appliances like electrical and mechanical devices are sold in the market. Defective functioning of these equipments may cause injuries or even death due to shock, fire and other accidents while using them. Some items are included in the electrical appliances quality control order. However a number of other items do not have any quality specifications. They are freely available in the market. The consumers buy and make use of them. This is a major problem.
- Adulteration
Adulterated goods are sold to consumers with a view to make illegal profits. Adulteration takes place when cheap substances are added to or good part of the product is removed. By adding, the quality of the goods is altered such type of adulteration is a form of cheating by the sellers. Adulteration is done in case of food items, building materials, textiles, stationary etc. Adulterated food items are injurious to the health of the consumers. Other items where adulterations take place are paints, cement, synthetic fibers, milk, spices etc. Government agencies have been set up to help consumers to get products tested in laboratories.
- Imitation Manufactures
Goods with imitation brands or names are sold in the market giving the impression that they are from popular standard manufacturers. They are actually substandard goods. Imitating is a deliberate malpractice and amounts to cheating consumers. Such practices are found with consumer goods like shoes, soaps, medicines, cosmetics etc. Many consumers suffer from this problem because they are ignorant or have faith in sales man or they lack information.
- Incorrect Weights And Measures
Sellers of consumer goods are sometimes found to use incorrect weights and measures. Deliberate use of less than standard weights and measures are made to cheat consumers or buyers. Thus the consumers get less or pay more for the under weighed articles. Measures are sometimes found deceptive in case of oils, milk and other liquids sold to consumers in limited quantities. Even items like cloths too can be measured less while selling to the buyers. Buyers are made to pay more for the reduced quality of articles.
Government has taken measures to control such malpractices through inspections by officers. The standard weights and measures Act 1976 and other rules are enacted by the government in this direction.
- Deceptive Goods
Manufactures place variety of goods which are deceptive in their appearance and the consumers are made to believe that the goods are genuine. Some goods like rayon or polyester fabrics are made to look like silk and the consumer is duped by the merchants who impress upon the buyers that they are genuine silk.
House wife may not be aware of the genuine goods needed for the family so she may buy the deceptive goods without verifing its quality. This is a genuine problem of the consumers.
- Misleading Advertisements
Advertisement is not quite informative. They are mainly focused on the goods and services that are made available in the market. They are of a general and routine type. Many of the advertisements do not give the needed information about the product; its use, quality, maintenance care etc. As a medium of communication advertisements should give all the information to the consumer.
Advertising is perhaps the most wide spread medium of communication between the procedure and consumer. Advertising should therefore be a most helpful tool to the consumer or buyer.
Advertisements generally talk of the uses of a product in bold letters, but not its limitations, if any, even the statutory warnings like for example “cigarette smoking is injurious to health” are put in small letters in an inconspicuous manner in the advertisements, which generally goes unnoticed.
For the consumer to understand clearly that the manufacturer is only trying to accomplish the sale of his product rather than inform the buyer about the quality of his product or any possible limitations in its use.
The consumer must seek on his own, information about the quality of the product in terms of style, color, weight, shape, size, stability and its care and maintenance and not restrict himself to information only on its economic aspects before he buys.
- Incomplete Labels
Labels are attached to a product informing the consumers about the product details like the quality, quantity, net weight, and measurer unit of the product etc have to be printed on the labels. Sometimes it shows nothing more than the name of the product and the manufacturer, whose address may or may not be mentioned for future correspondence or complaints. In many cases they are deceptive and misleading. Most of the labels often fail to give a perceptive buyer essential information he would need in order to make an intelligent selection.
The manufacturers more often use colorful and attractive labels to attract attention. In such cases, the label is not a reliable guide about its quality or as evidence of an assurance of quality. Most of the consumers are not highly educated and less experienced to follow the varied and glamorous terms that are popularly used to designate various things or qualities in an article.
- Deceptive Packaging
Packaging is done to protect the products from breakage, contamination, evaporation, pilferage etc. However many sellers use such packaging materials which will add to the weight of the packaged good so that the actual product weight less to that extent and the consumer is duped. Items like soaps, toothpaste, creams are packaged like this. Packaged goods bear the printed weights of the product however the actual weight is less than the information on the package. From the seller’s point of view, packaging is a sales tool.
- Prices
Every consumer expects that products are made available to him at reasonable prices. At times he does not mind paying a little extra for better quality and service. Prices are determined by a number of factors such as government policy, shortages, ignorance of buyers, delivery systems, quality, market locations, overhead expenses of the seller and the quality of services provided.
High prices are related to genuine reasons like high costs of production and distribution and high sales taxes etc. However consumers come across situations where sellers try to exploit them without any genuine reasons. Such situations of high prices pose a problem to consumers.
- Substandard Quality
Markets are flooded with products of different sizes and qualities. The consumer finds it difficult to choose with confidence where spurious spare parts of equipment, liquor and adulterated foods abound.
Apart from defrauding consumers the products of substandard quality pose safety problem to them. Examples are pressure cookers, electrical appliances, plugs and sockets, geysers, shampoos, helmets and gas regulators etc.
- Unfair Warranties
Consumers are not familiar with terms and implications of terms like guarantees and warranty. The terms of warrantees are confusing and ambiguous and are favorable to manufactures. There are no regulations to govern these warranties. Some warranties cover only the first user/buyer. The manufacturers absolve their liability towards the second or subsequent user or buyers. Some manufactures provide spare parts but charge service charges from the consumer. Some manufacturers use the term “guarantee” for a fixed period, say one year and repair defective goods and charge the defective parts free of cost. The terms warranty and guarantee appear synonymous and the sellers exploit the situation.
- Sale Gimmicks
Manufacturers indulge in some sale gimmicks by way of sale promotion measures viz
- Large scale advertisements
- Free gifts
- Discount sales
These problems measures appear to be extra benefits to the consumers. However the costs of these “benefits” are actually passed on to the consumers without their awareness about this.
The cost of advertisements, free gifts, discounts etc are added to the price of the product. The consumers buy these products being unaware of these sale gimmicks of the manufacturers.
- Dishonest Vending
There is no way a consumer can know what to pay for a product, unless vendors display prices clearly or the government/ voluntary organizations print a list in the press/ in consumer magazines.
- Black Marketing And Hoarding [Nature Of Markets]
Artificial scarcity of consumer goods is created by merchants to make illegitimate earnings. They resort to hoarding and black marketing of goods at exorbitant price thus causing great hardship to the consumers or buyers. They get extra profit by hoarding of the goods and create scarcity. Then they sell the hoarded goods in black markets at very high price. Generally food items like sugar and food grains are the items which are sold in black market. This is one of the frequently faced problems of the consumers.
- Conspicuous Consumption
Indian consumers are in the habit of spending lot of money on occasions such as birth, weddings, and festivals etc. as a part of family or social tradition and conventions. When they do not have enough money to spend, they resort to borrowing even if the interest charged is high. At times some properties like land, house, jewellery etc are mortgaged as security to obtain credit.
In rural areas specifically, the credit facilities are limited to private money lenders or pawn brokers who charge a very high interest and ultimately intimidate the borrowers to surrender their assets and even force them to become bounded if money is not returned in time. Lack of proper credit facilities and absence of fair lending regulations has driven families belonging to economically weaker sections of the society to fall an easy prey to these money lenders. This problem can only be solved by creation of organized credit facilities and introducing poverty alleviation schemes or spread of education among the poor in the society.
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