Identifying Fair and Unfair Business Practices Evan Klipple Andrew Ouellette Jeremy Klipple

“Bait and Switch”  The “Bait and Switch” method offers customers something that appears to be a good value/deal (an offer they can’t refuse), then the business replaces the item with something of less value or a price change.  This method is unfair because it causes customers to buy lower quality items when they wanted/expected to get the higher quality one.

“Bait and Switch”  Some consequences a business may get from using the “Bait and Switch” method is…..  Loss of cusomers  Lawsuit for false advertising  Bad company image

Price Fixing  Price fixing is an agreement (written, verbal, or inferred from conduct) among competitors that raises, lowers, or stabilizes prices or competitive terms.  When consumers make choices about what products and services to buy, they expect that the price has been determined freely on the basis of supply and demand, not by an agreement among competitors.  When competitors agree to restrict competition, the result is often higher prices.

Price Fixing  Price fixing impacts the consumer negatively because it doesn’t allow them to determine the price of the products that they want.  Usually if the price is too high, a consumer will go somewhere else to buy and find it cheaper, but with price fixing the consumer won’t be able to do that.  Price fixing also impacts the economy in a negative way because price fixing just throws out the rules of supply and demand.  The only parties that are positively affected by price fixing are the businesses participating in the illegal activity.

“Whistle Blowers”  A “Whistle Blower” is anyone who has and reports inside knowledge of illegal activities occurring in an organization.  The impact of “Whistle Blowers” is that they keep the business community safer by reporting illegal activities such as violation of laws, rules, and regulations.  They will also report direct threats to the public interest such as fraud, health, and safety violations.

Government Involvement  All the laws a government enacts are necessary to prevent and control deliberately unethical business practices on part of businesses, to protect the consumers and employees from unfair use of economic power by big companies.  The most common way of regulating private businesses in most of the countries is through its system of taxation and tariffs. These are fixed by the government to support and promote certain type of industries and business practices, and discourage others.  It is the government’s job to make sure that businesses are acting fairly in all the activities they participate in.