Can Bonus Packs Mislead Consumers? A Demonstration of How Behavioural Consumer Research Can Inform Unfair Commercial Practices Law on the Example of the ECJ’s Mars Judgement

Kai P. Purnhagen () and Erica Herpen ()
Additional contact information
Kai P. Purnhagen: Wageningen University
Erica Herpen: Wageningen University

Journal of Consumer Policy, 2017, vol. 40, issue 2, No 6, 217-234

Abstract: Abstract The use of psychological findings in EU internal market regulation has gained interest, particularly in the area of unfair commercial practices. This study investigates consumer perceptions of bonus packs containing an oversized indication of the “extra” volume in the package, such as in the Mars case. The Mars case serves as a standard reference in EU unfair commercial practices law which is used as a benchmark to determine the “average consumer.” Our study demonstrates how an experiment can be set up to provide empirically based insights on whether a practice is “deceptive.” Results of our experiment show that consumers overestimate the extra volume when confronted with an oversized indication compared to control conditions, which is first empirical evidence that this practice is potentially deceptive.

Keywords: Behavioural consumer; Unfair commercial practices; Average consumer; Mars judgement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10603-017-9345-0 Abstract (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jcopol:v:40:y:2017:i:2:d:10.1007_s10603-017-9345-0

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... es/journal/10603/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10603-017-9345-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Consumer Policy is currently edited by Hans Micklitz, John Thøgersen, Lucia A. Reisch, Alan Mathios and Christian Twigg-Flesner

More articles in Journal of Consumer Policy from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().