The National Consumer Agency today published its latest consumer research relating to consumer empowerment and complaints.The results are the latest part of the NCA’s on-going market research, conducted by means of face-to-face interviewing with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 people between the ages of 15-74. A key feature of the market research is the comparison of data collected in 5 previous waves of market research, conducted at regular intervals since December 2007.
The research, conducted by Amárach Research, tracks levels of consumer empowerment since December 2007 by examining how protected, knowledgeable and confident people feel about their consumer rights.
Key results are highlighted below:
* The numbers of consumers who feel confident (73%), knowledgeable (67%) and protected (64%) with regard to their consumer rights remain consistent with the previous research
* Consumers who don’t feel confident have increased to 18% (up from 14%) to the level recorded two years ago
* Consumers who don’t feel knowledgeable remains the same at 20% and consumers who don’t feel protected has increased 1% to 15%
* 80% of Irish consumers claim they would be prepared to complain, if a problem had occurred or they are dissatisfied with a good or service purchased.
* Supermarkets and newsagents were the purchasing category most likely to cause a complaint/return of a good by the consumer. There was also a slight increases in the numbers of consumers willing to complain about TV service providers, airlines and car dealers, which all increased by 4%
* The majority (51%) of complaints continue to be in relation to a product/service being faulty
* 63% of those who complained said they found the process easy – down from 69%
* Unhelpful staff continues to be the number one difficulty experienced, increasing from 55% to 63%
* 38% of Irish consumers, up 2%, have had reason to complain in the past twelve months while 4 in 5 (80%) of those, the highest level recorded to date, actually made a complaint.
* For consumers who had cause to complain but didn’t, the main reason was given as “I did not want the hassle of making a complaint” which dropped back from 44% to 37% since the last wave, now consistent with the August 2008 research
* 7 in 10 (71%) who made a complaint within the last twelve months state they had their complaint completely resolved of those 70% claimed to be happy with the way in which their complaint was handled. A greater proportion than the previous wave cited that the complaint was partly resolved (17% versus 13%)
* 30% of consumers are likely to tell other people about a positive complaints experience, a decrease of 7% from the previous wave of research in November/December 2009
* Over half (53%, up 9%) of those who has reason to complainclaim that they will continue to buy from the business that they had cause or reason to complain about
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