Consumer organization

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Consumer organizations are advocacy groups that seek to protect people from corporate abuse. Unsafe products, predatory lending, false advertising, astroturfing and pollution are all examples of corporate abuse.

Consumer organizations may operate via protests, campaigning or lobbying. They may engage in single-issue advocacy (e.g., the British Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which campaigned with great success against keg beer and for cask ale), or set themselves up as consumer watchdogs such as the Consumers' Association in the UK. One common method is the independent comparative survey or test of a particular type of product or service, involving different manufacturers or companies (e.g., Which?, Consumer Reports, etc.).

Another arena where consumer organizations have operated is food safety. The needs for campaigning in this area are less easy to reconcile with their traditional methods, since the scientific, dietary or medical evidence is normally more complex than in other arenas, such as the electric safety of white goods. The current standards on mandatory labelling, in developed countries, have in part been shaped by past lobbying by consumer groups.

The aim of consumer organizations may be to establish and to attempt to enforce consumer rights. Effective work has also been done, however, simply by using the threat of bad publicity to keep companies' focus on the consumers' point of view.

[edit] Market Advocacy

Some groups sole purpose to exist is to encourage suppliers to cater for them. For example, coeliac disease leaves one in a hundred unable to consume gluten. Glutenfreebeerfestival.com is a consumer organisation who's main aim is to encourage brewers to provide gluten free beer, and to alert industry that there are consumers keen to purchase a product should they wish to provide it.

In such cases, the consumer group is working with business to encourage the expansion of the market. In this instance Glutenfreebeerfestival.comasserts that there is a profit to be made by producing gluten free beer, and is attempting to draw this to the attention of producers, who they think are unaware of the number of consumers who wish to purchase this product.