PERCEPTION OF CONSUMERS’ RIGHT IN BHUTAN: A CASE OF THIMPHU CONSUMERS

Abstract

Consumer protection means safeguarding the economic interests, rights, and safety of the consumers to avoid economic harm and health hazards while consuming goods and services in the market. In other words, it refers to the measures adopted to protect the consumers from unfair and deceptive practices by the business entities and to provide appropriate redresses, remedies, or compensations to aggrieved consumers. Four major consumer rights (Right to Safety, Right to be Informed, Right to Choose, and Right to be Heard) were investigated in this study from the consumer’s perspective whether marketers’ practices are safeguarding these rights or not. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to measure consumer perception regarding the four basic consumer rights, utilizing a five-point Likert scale measure. A total of 400 samples were collected from different zones of Thimphu Thromde and researchers achieved a 100 % response rate. An almost equal number of male and female respondents have participated in this survey where the majority of them fall in the age group of 21-30 years. Interestingly, 72% of respondents are aware of the Office of Consumer Protection (OCP) and 82% of respondents know that they can practice certain rights as a consumer in the market. All four hypotheses were statistically significant and the Right to safety and the Right to Choose were perceived as high favorableness (m=3.67 for both) whereas, the Right to be Informed and the Right to be Heard were perceived as medium favorableness (m=3.63 and m=3.29 respectively). According to these findings, Bhutanese consumers and relevant consumer protection agencies should feel proud that marketers in Bhutan are safeguarding consumers’ rights and further improvements in certain aspects which had low mean scores would definitely make the Bhutanese market free of fraudulent and unfair trade practices.