Q.Give any two causes of consumer exploitation.

Consumer exploitation is rarely caused by a single factor — it is usually a combination of gaps on the consumer's side and weaknesses in the surrounding market and enforcement system. …

Consumer exploitation persists in the marketplace mainly because of several interconnected causes, most of which reflect a genuine imbalance of power and information between the individual buyer and organised business; two of the most significant are discussed below.

The first cause is illiteracy and lack of awareness among consumers. A large number of buyers, particularly in rural and semi-urban areas, are not fully aware of their legal rights, of the quality or safety certification marks they should look for, or of the redressal machinery available to them if something goes wrong. This lack of awareness makes it easy for an unscrupulous seller to pass off inferior, mislabelled, or even adulterated goods without being challenged, since the buyer simply does not know enough to recognise or question the malpractice.

The second cause is the lack of organisation among consumers. Unlike producers and traders, who are typically organised into associations, chambers of commerce, or trade bodies with a collective, coordinated voice, individual consumers are widely scattered across the market and rarely organised in the same way. This absence of a united front weakens their ability to bargain collectively, to raise a joint complaint that a seller cannot easily ignore, or to boycott a defaulting seller effectively — an isolated individual complaint carries far less weight than an organised one. …

Students sometimes list a form of exploitation (like adulteration) as if it were a 'cause' — a cause explains why exploitation happens (illiteracy, lack of organisation, monopoly …