HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR EXAMINES THE RISE OF THE CONSUMER IN FRANCE AND GERMANY
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BOSTON - An analysis of modern capitalism usually focuses on national production and distribution. However, in his new book, Consumer Capitalism: Politics, Product Markets, and Firm Strategy in France and Germany (Cornell University Press), Harvard Business School Assistant Professor J. Gunnar Trumbull offers a third factor for analysis: consumption. Consumer Capitalism explores the political roots of consumer protection policies that emerged in France and Germany in the 1970s – and how these policies gave birth to the consumer as an economic actor with a specific identity and status protected by legal and regulatory institutions.
In the context of the growing consumer affluence that followed World War II, economic actors and policymakers began to reconceptualize the role of consumers in society. National governments shifted the burden of product-related risk from consumers to producers. As a result, new laws, regulations, and legal standards forced producers to provide accurate product information, thereby altering the contractual relationship between producers and consumers. As consumers became the focus of intensive economic policymaking designed to protect them from the risks and disappointments of an unfettered marketplace, they no longer needed to heed the age-old slogan “Buyer Beware!”
Through a comparison of eight areas of policy – product liability law, product safety standards and recall, misleading advertising, comparative product tests, product labeling, quality standards, consumer contracts, and pricing – Trumbull explains the two different concepts of consumer interest that developed in France and Germany and that in turn influenced the market strategies of domestic producers.
The findings in Consumer Capitalism help to clarify distinctive national approaches to recent product crises, including cases of BSE (mad cow disease) and genetically modified foods. Trumbull’s research suggests that, in the age of consumer capitalism, national competitiveness may hinge not only on endowments of labor and capital but on the institutional forms of national consumption.
Visit HBS Working Knowledge to read a recent Q&A with Trumbull about the rise of consumer protectionism: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/5470.html.
About the Author
J. Gunnar Trumbull teaches in the Business, Government, and the International Economy unit at Harvard Business School. He graduated from Harvard College in 1991, earned a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. in 1999, and joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 2001. He has been a Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute and a research associate at the Brookings Institution. He is also a faculty associate at the Center for European Studies.
About Harvard Business School
Founded in 1908 as part of Harvard University, Harvard Business School (www.hbs.edu) is located in Boston and offers full-time programs leading to the MBA and doctoral degrees, as well as more than 40 Executive Education programs. With a faculty of more than 200 distinguished scholars, the School is dedicated to educating leaders who make a difference in the world. Its core focus is to shape the practice of business, build enduring knowledge, and effectively communicate important ideas. Harvard Business School is the world’s largest producer of business cases, a method of teaching pioneered by the School in the 1920s.