Consumers and Consumerism

The branch of economics known as microeconomics focuses on the behaviour of individual consumers and individual firms. The theory of the consumer describes how individual consumers make economic decisions, given their preferences, their incomes, and their prices of the goods and services that they desire to purchase. Economists use the term utility (одиниця корисності) to describe the pleasure or satisfaction that a consumer obtain from his or her consumption of goods and services.

There are different ways to talk about people who buy things.

Customers are individuals or organizations who buy things from other individuals, shops or organizations, pay for a service or order something from a company.

Consumers are people who buy goods and services for their own use or consumption and not for resale (перепродаж). Consumers are now recognized as an important group - the government has passed laws (прийняти закон) to safeguard (гарантувати, охороняти) the interests of the consumer. An organized movement (consumerism) for consumer protection (захист споживача) has emerged (з’являтися, виникати) in the last 40 years.

Consumerism consists of all those activities that are undertaken to protect the rights of consumers in their dealings with business. There exist four basic rights of consumers: the right to safety (безпека), the right to be informed, the right to choose and the right to be heard. Manufacturers investigate consumer tastes using market research (дослідження ринку).

Clients are individuals or organizations who pay for services provided by a professional person or organization such as a lawyer, an accountant, a bank, advertising agency, etc.

A business may refer to its customers as its customer base or client base.

1. Form verbs from the following nouns:

consumer, protection, investigation, service, recognition, activity, manufacturer, choice, movement, customer.

2. Give the English for:

покупець, споживач, платити за послугу, споживання, перепродаж, приймати закон, охороняти інтереси споживача, захист прав споживача, смаки споживача, дослідження ринку, клієнт, бухгалтер, рекламна агенція.

3. Match words from list A with words from list B that have a similar meaning.

A

end user

producer

study

purchase

buyer

action

safeguard

select

B

customer

consumer

protect

activity

manufacturer

investigate

choose

buy

4. Find suitable opposites to the following words:

similar, to sell, to reject, idleness, insignificant, producer

5. Match the nouns in the left hand column with the nouns in the right hand column and translate them into Ukrainian:

	choice
	industry
consumer	products
	protection
	spending
customer	taste
	service
	base