There is the vulnerable consumer who has been taken advantage of and the irresponsible one who should have known better. Consumer ethics may be said to still be a growing trend of business and marketing. In this area, there almost always seems to be the dichotomy between and ‘good’ and ‘bad’ business, as well as consumption. This renders it a moral color. By the dictates of popular culture and modern society, the ‘bad’ has to be rebuked and the ‘good’ remains idealistic.

Many literatures in media portray bad behavior more than good ethics, of both consumers and business companies. This is probably because it is of seemingly more interesting material to talk about what is wrong, rather than what should be done to be right.

In this day and age, there are fewer consumers who are vulnerable enough to be taken advantage of. Unless the scenario is of total ignorance and surprise such as the melamine tainted milk, eggs, and animal feeds that had been streaming out of China. In this case, the consumer is a total victim of an evil business enterprise. I use the word ‘evil’ since the topic is ethics that connotes moral ground.

Moreover, there is also hardly any consumer in this day who is irresponsible enough to not have known better. Business reach is wide. And where business reaches, so does information related to the lifestyle under which the products being sold belong.

All things being equal, a consumer is generally inquisitive about the product he or she will use. He or she did not set out to purchase it blindly and with total faith. Also, business competition is high. The consumer can only be a well-informed member of the purchasing population because competing products will naturally want to inform its consumers well.

Consumers can be forces for ‘good.’ But it needs an overhauling of mindset and popular opinion to turn consumer dishonesty into consumer responsibility. Moreover, there should be more conscious efforts to not label consumer responsibility or consumer goodness as idealistic because having such are attainable. It is the consumers’ obligation to maximize their positive impact and minimize their negative impact. There is a lot of potential for consumers to be ‘good consumers.’

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Via msnbc