Selbstorganisation von Verbrauchern-theoretische Überlegungen und empirische Befunde

Zusammenfassung

Der Beitrag referiert die Ergebnisse zweier in den Jahren 1977/78 durchgeführten Befragungen von Vorständen und Mitgliedern von Verbrauchervereinen in der BRD und bringt sie in Zusammenhang mit weiterführenden Argumentationen, die im Rahmen laufender Forschungsvorhaben der AGVP erarbeitet wurden.

Ausgehend von einer Analyse der Handlungen von fremd- und selbstorganisierten Verbrauchervereinen wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob die derzeit bestehenden selbstorganisierten Verbrauchervereine eine formale und inhaltliche Alternative zu bestehenden Verbraucherfremdorganisationen bilden.

Abstract

The paper reports on a study of local consumer organizations in the Federal Republic of Germany with and without individual membership. The study is part of a theoretical and empirical evaluation of present consumer policy aiming at the discovery of ways to activate consumer organizations. Above all, the project explores whether organizations with individual membership would be an organizationally feasible and qualitatively preferable alternative.

To do this, it was necessary, as a first research step, to evaluate the existing local consumer organizations by considering various aspects of organizational and individual behaviour within them. Questionnaires were constructed for both officials and members of the organizations. The study shows that local consumer organizations with and without individual membership do not differ much in their activities. Distributing information about prices and qualities of goods becomes the main task. The direct membership of consumers in consumer organizations does not automatically lead to a qualitatively different situation.

Member consumer organizations—that receive their legitimization because of a connection to the rank-and-file — need active consumers. Therefore, in the second step in this research phase, an attempt was made to explain the extent of individual activity in consumer organizations. It was shown that “preference for collective strategies” and “participative organizational structure” were relatively strong predictors. The study shows further that organizations without individual membership tend to resemble member organizations; as the organizational structure becomes rigid, individual activity ceases.