Recognition and Protest for Consumer Rights

Book excerpt: Under the section 6 of Consumer Protection Act, 1986 there has been an effort to empower consumers by giving them six consumer rights. But the fact of the matter is that the rights of consumers are still infringed by unfair and restrictive trade practices adopted by traders or manufacturers.The study aimed to analyze the consumers' awareness level and protest of recognized and unrecognized consumer rights. Further, it identifies and analyse the sources of awareness of consumer rights.The primary data is used which has been collected by using a structured questionnaire. 600 respondents of rural and urban areas of fifteen districts of Haryana were sampled. Responses were analyzed by the help of Percentages, Chi- square, One Sample t-Test, Karl Pearson Co-efficient of Correlation and presented by tables. It was concluded nearly half of the respondents were found aware about the consumer rights but protest for the rights was not much evident. Moreover, awareness of unrecognized consumer rights was also equally accepted by consumers. It indicated that consumers did not exactly know the legal rights but everything which felt like consumer right deemed to be the right of consumer. Television has been reported as major source of awareness of consumer rights along with schools/ colleges, internet and newspaper. Radio was most unpopular source of awareness along with friends and family. Educated, young and high income consumers found internet as very useful source.