Desafios à proteção do consumidor emergentes do consumo digital: um estudo sobre práticas abusivas à luz dos dados fornecidos pelo Consumidor.gov

Abstract

The growth of digital commerce, amplified by the advent of Big Data, just as it happened during the industrial revolution, has set new increasingly adaptable and efficient standards for production, distribution, and marketing. In general, a significant part of this evolution aims primarily to increase market profitability. Given this, it has been noticed that historically, the improvement of productive capacity is associated with a gradual increase in behavior patterns harmful to the health and well-being of consumers. In response, consumer relations began to be regulated. In Brazil, in particular, the Consumer Defense Code (CDC) established a list of behaviors that are considered abusive. This work investigates these practices, based on the idea that consumerist movements arose from consumer complaints, reflecting the abusive practices of their time. In this vein, a descriptive and analytical study of complaints made by consumers on the “consumidor.gov.br” website was chosen, using the empirical study as a method, through the creation of software to process, group, and associate the collected data. The general objective of this work was to analyze the phenomenon of abusive practices and the complaints most reported in the context of current consumer relations. In response, the hypothesis that advances in production and sales techniques are linked to the emergence of new abusive practices was confirmed. Furthermore, it was found that the abusive practice perpetuated by suppliers that is most reported among those established by the CDC list is the abusive practice of not stipulating a deadline for fulfilling obligations. Such a situation is a result of the emergence of immediate consumption provided by the internet, which is a conducive environment for misinformation. In this context, it is observed that consumers have been demanding more and more from suppliers. It was found that, in response, they have been dedicating fewer efforts to post-sale service and increasing their focus on the dissemination of advertising