Suchergebnisse

An examination is presented of the consumer organizations operating mainly within present technological frameworks. Their primary function is seen as helping the consumer to make rational choices in the context of current markets & prices. The extent to which they can be developed to play a significant part in the process of new technologies assessment is also explored. A review of the consumer movement in the US from its earliest appearance in 1928, through to the Consumers' Union founded in 1935 & its expansion in the '40's, would indicate that it met consumer needs for information largely by conducting & reporting the results of comparative tests. But this method of providing consumer information was not adequate to cover the wide range of consumer goods & services which were neither branded nor standardized. As a consequence, its role was expanded to seek informative labeling on the part of the manufacturers or producers, or to require quality certification meeting minimum levels of composition or performance & established & verified by the consumer organization. All these techniques used to provide consumer information are seen as only meeting the needs of more sophisticated consumers (in terms of high SC, high income, & late terminal education age) & scarcely beginning to touch the consumer problems of the poorer sections of the community who are not aware of their own information needs & whose education does not equip them to deal with such information as provided. A suggestion is made that such a deficiency might be met by a new range of social institutions directed primarily at the low-income consumers, along the pattern of the British shopping "advice centers." In the future, consumer organizations might further expand their information roles to include an examination of the consequences of technological change for consumers & also identification of consumers' unsatisfied technological needs. Thus, technology, is seen as subject to social control & responsive to social needs. E. Loomis.