The Improvement of the Situation of the Contemporary Consumer – Education, Awareness and Protection of his Rights and Interests

In our contemporary society, the consumer facing a wide and abundant diversity of products and services, with an increasing degree of similarity, has to make more and more difficult consumption decisions. The consumption represents the driving force of the economy and the main reason standing at the foundation of the human efforts, which brings happiness to the individuals-consumers and has favorable consequences for all the society. At present, some authors consider that a more suitable concept would be that of ‘consumption society’, because we are in an economy characterized by the continuous and aggressive stimulation of the demand, by the permanent emerging of new and new ‘needs’ that we are stimulated to quickly satisfy in a society where the symbolic value of goods has received a particular significance. As a result, we develop a society in which we are what we consume, and in the collective consciousness it has appeared and it has became engrained the tendency of appreciating the human value in monetary terms, the possibility to consume representing a barometer of the life quality.   Starting from these aspects, not only from the companies' point of view, but also from the consumers', we need a new approach of the consumer's behavior from a scientific point of view, taking into account three elements: the changing in the behavior of the contemporary consumer under the conditions of the existence of the hyper-consumption society, the need to educate the consumer and the importance of his protection.