| Practice area: | Competition & Antitrust |
|---|---|
| Client: | N/A |
| Published: | 21 November, 2024 |
| Keywords: | antitrust behavioural competition consumer Data experiments Public Policy |
The Digital Markets Competition and Consumer Act is expected to see a boom in consumer protection. Michael Grenfell, the CMA’s former executive director of enforcement told the Global Competition Review ‘consumer protection will become “as significant and as much a risk factor for businesses as antirust has been to date”‘.
A key element of consumer protection is ensuring that consumers make well-informed choices in their own best interest. Understanding the impact of choice architecture and ensuring a robust understanding of how consumers make choices and how these choices may be impacted – (both positively and negatively) by framing, context and information needs to be at the forefront of business decisions and those who regulate business behaviour. Testing the impacts of choice architecture on customer behaviours will become ever more important with the introduction of the DMCC in the UK, provisions relating to choice architecture in the EU Digital Markets Act, and the UK FCA’s Customer Duty.
In 2024, London Economics’ behavioural experts, in collaboration with an OECD expert advisory group, designed behavioural experiments for the OECD to test a range of online dark patterns such as urgency messages, countdown timers and nagging. Preliminary findings were presented at the inaugural OECD Consumer Policy Ministerial Meeting held on the 8-9 of October 2024. The full OECD report will be published in 2025. Access the preliminary findings here: Issues note: Protecting and empowering consumers in the digital transition.
This timely study sits alongside what we expect to be an expanding role of behavioural economics in both consumer protection and competition enforcement (Behavioural Insights and the CMA Google Play case).
—————————————————————————————————————
Dr Charlotte Duke, Partner. Contact her by email here.
Dr Charlotte Duke is an expert in consumer behaviour and behavioural economics with over 20 years experience advising regulators, government and private sector in the field of behavioural economics. Charlotte also acts as an independent expert witness in international investigations and legal cases as a behavioural economics expert.
James Suter, Divisional Director. Contact him by email here.
James Suter is an experienced economist with expertise in behavioural economics, particularly assessing and quantifying the effects of commercial practices on marketplace decision-making, consumer outcomes and harm.