Safety
According to the Consumer Protection Act 1986, the consumer right is referred to as ‘right to be protected against marketing of goods and services which are hazardous to life and property’.It is applicable to specific areas like healthcare, pharmaceuticals.
Information
The right to information is defined as ‘the right to be informed about the quality, quantity, potency, purity, standard and price of goods or services, as the case may be so as to protect the consumer against unfair trade practices’ in the Consumer Protection Act of 1986.
Consumerism
Consumerism is a social as well as economic order which encourages the buying of goods and services in ever-greater amounts. This term is sometimes associated with critics of consumption beginning with Thorstein Veblen. Veblen's topic of examination.
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Meaning of Consumerism
Consumerism is a social as well as economic order which encourages the buying of goods and services in ever-greater amounts. This term is sometimes associated with critics of consumption beginning with Thorstein Veblen. Veblen's topic of examination, the newly emerging middle class coming up at the threshold of the twentieth century, is coming to full fruition by twentieth century end through the globalization process.
At some places, the term "consumerism" refers to the consumerists movement, consumer activism or consumer protection which seeks to defend and inform consumers by having required these practices as honest advertising and packaging, product guarantees, and enhanced standards of safety. In this regard it is a movement or an array of policies having a mission of regulating the products, methods, services, and standards of sellers, manufacturers and advertisers in the buyers’ interests.
As per economics, consumerism means economic policies laying emphasis on consumption. In a sense, it is believed that the consumers are free to make choice and should dictate the society’s economic structure.
The term "consumerism" had been first used in the year 1915 and referred to "advocacy of the rights and interests of consumers" defined in Oxford English Dictionary but here in this article the term "consumerism" means the sense which was first used in 1960, "emphasis on or preoccupation with the acquisition of consumer goods’.
