Research of consumer organizations from the perspective of young consumer

In order to protect consumer rights and to put the pressure on the state and the business environment, the activities that consumer organizations will carry out with a wide participation are of great importance. It is important to reveal the views of young people regarding consumer organizations in Turkey where the rate of young population is high. Thus, it will be possible for relevant institutions to develop policies and training programs to raise awareness among young consumers. For this reason, in this research, an online questionnaire was applied to 301 university students in order to reveal the level of young people's knowledge on some basic legal rights, on consumer organizations and their studies, and to examine their views on the activities of consumer organizations. The data obtained from the research were analyzed using the SPSS package program. 61.1% of the young people who participated the research describe themselves as conscious consumers. It was observed that the rate of women (68.3%) who stated that they regard themselves as conscious consumers who are aware of their rights was higher than men (51.6%) (p<0.05). However, according to the results of the research, it has been determined that the knowledge of young people about consumer organizations is limited and the majority of them do not have membership in any consumer organization. On the other hand, it is remarkable that young people have positive views on the activities of consumer organizations and have expectations from these organizations. It has been determined that the views of young people about their expectations from consumer organizations and the state of seeing themselves as a conscious consumer are related (p<0.05). This situation suggests that young consumers find favourable the idea that they should act together to protect their rights, but they are not yet conscious enough to reflect this on their behavior or they are distant from the idea of taking action.