Consumer vulnerability
Consumer vulnerability
This term and the term vulnerability is being banded around by so many different people and organisations including us (Consumer Friend) This is meant in a good spirited, social movement, support everyone sort of a way, but we seem to have forgotten the whole point of why we talk about this so much.
The reason we do it at Consumer Friend is in the hope we will make things easier to understand for people. basically when you buy things, what can you expect before and where you stand if things don’t quite go to plan. We try to make it easier to understand for people, no complex assumed knowledge, no massive words we have to look up or can’t actually say. Plain English, plain speaking!
We sadly forgot the above, we used our assumed knowledge and totally missed the fact that consumers may not know what consumer vulnerability means.
We train people that when a consumer is potentially vulnerable because of the situation going on around them or the thing they are trying to buy. They don’t know they are vulnerable. However, we have some assumed knowledge that everyone knows what vulnerability is and what it is in relation to being a consumer.
This doesn’t land with people!
So, we are going to try and explain it here and hope that it might help someone.
Consumer vulnerability. What does it mean. Not in our usually fancy definition way.
Consumer vulnerability is when something is happening around you. Or you are buying something that you haven’t bought before, or you don’t know a-lot about. Either one of these, or both means you might not make your best decisions. When I say best decisions, I mean you might not get exactly what you want or need from whatever you are buying. This is caused because of all the other things happening around you.
We work with businesses to help them make everything easier to understand and give consumers what they need so they get their choices right first time. We call it designing inclusive services to support all consumers. A simpler way to describe it, is asking what people need and if they don’t know, help them to find out.
If you would like to work with us, talk to us about our consumer vulnerability training, be a guest on our podcast, talk to us about giving people what they need. Drop us an email…. We love new friends!
Check out the website www.consumerfriend.org.uk or check out the podcast for an easy listen learn on vulnerability.