Marketing Practices Act

What is the Marketing Practices Act?

The Marketing Practices Act and marketing laws in general serve to protect consumers against companies and competitors against each other. This is done by compelling companies to obey good marketing practices and thus behave decently when promoting themselves. They establish boundaries for companies’ behavior towards consumers and each other.

Good practices and marketing laws

Marketing laws require companies to be considerate of consumers. Especially children’s natural credulity has to be taken into account.

First of all, misleading consumers with incorrect information is prohibited. This applies both to the product’s existence, nature, prize or consumer rights (for example guarantees). If you do not pay attention to this, later purchases or sales can be declared invalid due to actual deficiencies.

You are not allowed to be too aggressive in your sales methods, for example by threatening or coercing.

Electronic marketing

According to marketing laws, a company may not address consumers by phone or e-mail with direct marketing, unless given the expressed permission to do so. Additionally, the conditions have to be clearly understood when selling via phone or e-mail. You also have to simply comply with a consumer’s wish to not be contacted with marketing, without any fees.

Other parts of marketing laws

Marketing laws are too complex to cover all the parts. Nonetheless, it is important to note that it is generally illegal to compare yourself directly to competitors in your advertisements.

You are required to name the prize (including per unit of measurement if that is relevant) and for certain products there will also be fixed provisions that the packaging has to be provided with specific product designations, symbols, contents, composition, durability and treatment.