The Conceptualisation of Consumer Harm

Whilst consumer welfare has been well documented in the economics and marketing literature, the same cannot be said about the conceptualisation of consumer harm. This paper will thus help to enhance the existing body of knowledge in Competition Law and Consumer Protection fields by providing a conceptual framework that will incorporate aspects of consumer harm from both the Competition Law and the Consumer Protection perspectives. Whilst this aspect has already been subject to debates, the existing body of literature on competition law and consumer protection has tended to ignore a very important concept of consumer harm from the marketing perspective which tends to show that consumer protection should also incorporate consumer confusion. This paper will hence aim at filling this gap in the literature and provide an innovative framework that will integrate protection from harm from different perspectives including competition harm, consumer harm as defined in the consumer protection field, and consumer confusion.