We live in a world in which goods and services abound in large quantities, however, accessing them limits us to having a payment method. The previous context makes strong reference to consumption, which represents a decrease in the amount of products that we are able to purchase. A Colombian consumes daily, either in food, transportation, and even in entertainment (beer, travel, cinema, parties, among others). However, many times this consumption is not balanced, since excessive consumption can occur or vice versa. In this order of ideas, philosophy has a lot to do, specifically ethics, which represents one of the branches of this science, and which in terms of consumption can refer to an “ethics of consumption”.
Each household reports monthly expenses of 1.9 million pesos in goods and services such as food, food, entertainment, education, health, transportation and communications, among others, as reported by the newspaper EL TIEMPO (2018). Therefore, it is possible to think that each action of a Colombian generates consumption, and that even those people who work, as their respective pay, receive an amount of money that will allow them to access said consumption.
In this sense, consumption is the main indicator of this country, however, it is no secret to anyone that Colombia experienced problems in terms of its economy due to various factors that even corresponded to other parts of society, such as politics. This political imbalance had a negative impact on Colombian households during the last decades because, in order to reduce the fiscal deficit and expand the external debt, economic regulatory measures were applied to cover this situation.
In this way, with the financing law, specifically Law No. 1943 Dec 28, 2018, "By which financing regulations are issued to restore the balance of the general budget and other provisions are issued" (MinHacienda, 2019) the VAT of the 13% of the majority (if not all) of the products of the Colombian family basket came into force, which meant an impact on the consumption of Colombians, since in these terms, each person reconsidered if they really needed said item in their Therefore, consumption became limited compared to previous dates in which the VAT of 13% represented the acquisition of another product, so in a way, this behavior was related to the ethics of consumption.
Colombian consumption is governed under three (3) assumptions: brand, quality and price. The first refers to companies that produce and distribute goods and services both inside and outside the country, which are in charge of filling warehouses and stores where these products can be purchased for a certain amount of money. The influence that the brand has on consumption.
"The function of the brand is to differentiate and individualize in the market some products or services from other identical or similar products or services, as well as to identify their business origin and, in a certain way, to be an indicator of quality and a means of promotion sales. Therefore, the brand is the distinctive sign used by the entrepreneur to differentiate its products or services from the products or services of its competitors in the market. (Valera, 2015: p.3)
Regarding quality, this represents a direct relationship with the brand, and that together with this allows to increase the consumption of a product. The above is understood in the sense that quality allows one product to be above another, since in most cases quality means longer duration compared to another of lower quality.
Thus, the price brings together the two assumptions mentioned in the previous paragraphs, and represents the main factor that gives rise to consumption, since it can be thought that, without the existence of this, consumption would represent instability and volatility. The higher the price, the probability of consumption decreases, and if not, it increases. In this way, ethics must take into account all of the above, that is, ethics is necessary for stable and responsible consumption, therefore, consumption ethics exists
“The ethics of consumption studies and analyzes the way in which it should be consumed and how an informed consumer should be; This attempts to answer the question of what should be consumed, why it should be consumed and who should decide what to consume; in addition to the consequences it must have when consuming and the limitations of unlimited consumption ”(RNPC, 2019).
Finally, it can be inferred that ethics is important to understand consumption by answering the questions posed by the author in the previous statement, however, this article does not attempt to resolve these questions because, as it was raised from the beginning, the point at which What we wanted to achieve is that ethics is necessary and important in the consumer market, and well, following Aristotle's idea of ethics, applying it to consumption allows us to achieve supreme happiness.
Therefore, Colombians should begin to practice the ethics of consumption more vigorously when consuming, because by answering the questions it suggests, we would be really evaluating consumption, and we would not fall into the temptation to agree to buy a product hastily and then be sorry.
Bibliographic references:
- Economy and Business (2018). On average, each household spends $ 1.9 million per month. EL TIEMPO newspaper. Bogota Colombia. Retrieved from: https://www.eltiempo.com/economia/finanzas-personales/gasto-de-los-hogares-al-mes-segun-el-dane-252782MinHacienda (2019). Financing Law. Law No. 1943 Dec 28, 2018 National Consumer Protection Network (RNPC), (2019). Ethics of consumption. Definition. Retrieved from: http://www.redconsumidor.gov.co/publicaciones/consumo_responsable_pubValera, L (2015). How does the brand influence the consumer in non-durable consumer products? Empirical study between leading brands and private labels, Polytechnic University of Cartagena. Final Degree Project in Business Administration and Management. Colombia Bogota. Retrieved from: http://repositorio.upct.es/bitstream/handle/10317/5816/tfg-val-com..pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed = y
