Engaging with Promotional Culture: Organised Consumerism and the Personal Financial Services Industry

Abstract

The UK's expanding personal financial services sector has been the site of allegations of widespread professional malpractice. In response, the Consumers' Association has begun to scrutinise financial products and services more closely. The personal financial sector is a promotional culture, in which information and persuasion are inextricably linked. It appears, therefore, to be a prime target for the Consumers' Association, whose mission is to supply consumers with objective information uncontaminated by commercial self-interest. The argument in this article is that key features of the Consumers' Association - its gesellschaftlich character, mass-market orientation, reverence for the ideal of professionalism, faith in regulation, and Fordist research methodology - limit its capacity both to mount an effective evaluation of personal financial products and services and to create an informed public.