The weary customer: choosing not to choose amon unfair 'choices'

Gilles Jeannot ()
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Gilles Jeannot: LATTS - Laboratoire Techniques, Territoires et Sociétés - UPEM - Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée - ENPC - École nationale des ponts et chaussées - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique

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Abstract: Critics concerned with the effect of the market practices of public utility companies have primarily focused on issues of disconnection and inequality. This paper goes further, challenging the very premise on which the model is based: the principle of individual choice. The article focuses on the French gas, electricity and telephone sectors, developing two points. The first is the declining trust in public utility companies and a certain choice averseness. The second point addresses the experience of the "customer" pressured to make the "right" choice through manipulation and misinformation by competing suppliers. Thus, instead of "active customers" directing markets through their "choices", what is seen is the disaffection or "weariness" of customers in front of what they perceive as an unfair situation.

Keywords: choice overload; switching cost; confusion (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-11-25
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Published in Political Quarterly, 2015, 87 (1), pp.54-60. ⟨10.1111/1467-923X.12213⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-01282150

DOI: 10.1111/1467-923X.12213

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