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Can EU Consumer Law Benefit From Behavioural Insights?

An Analysis of the Unfair Practices Directive

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European Perspectives on Behavioural Law and Economics

Part of the book series: Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship ((EALELS,volume 2))

Abstract

This chapter explores in what ways behavioural insights could be used to shape the interpretation of European law on unfair practices. It is argued that insights from social psychology on influencing techniques are relevant to the interpretation of the directive on unfair practices. These insights cut across national legal traditions and could therefore contribute to a uniform interpretation of EU law in the field of unfair commercial practices. Both conceptual and empirical insights from psychology are valuable from a legal point of view. In order for such insights to be put to actual legal use, it is important to address the question of how they should be used. In this regard, presumptions appear to be a very apt vehicle to incorporate behavioural teachings into the law.

As published in the European Review of Private Law (ERPL) 6 (2014), p. 901–942. With thanks for the kind permission to reprint this article.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The directive on consumer rights consolidates many of these requirements. Directive 2011/83/EU on consumer rights, OJ L 304, 22/11/2011,pp. 64–88, spec. Article 5 “Information requirements for contracts other than distance or off-premises contracts” contains 8 informational requirements, making it mandatory for traders to disclose such information as the main characteristics of the goods or services, the business address of the seller and telephone number (but not email), total price of the goods or services, arrangements for payment, delivery, etc. Article 6 “Information requirements for distance and off-premises contracts” lists 20 different items of information whose provision is mandatory. The services directive also emphasizes the information dimension. Chapter V of the directive, entitled “Quality of Services” contains in article 22 a long list of information that Providers must make available. Directive 2006/123/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 12 December 2006 on services in the internal market, OJ L 376, 27/12/2006, pp. 36–68.

  2. 2.

    Reich and Micklitz 2014, p. 21; Stuyck et al. 2006, p. 108 and references cited; Weatherill 2013, Chap. 4; Franck and Purnhagen 2014, pp. 334 et seq.

  3. 3.

    On the failure of information requirements more generally, see Ben-Shahar and Schneider 2011; Ben-Shahar and Schneider 2014. For a study on smarter disclosure requirements, see Bar-Gill 2012.

  4. 4.

    Established case law since Case C-210/96 Gut Springerheide [1998] ECR I-4657, para. 31.

  5. 5.

    Homo oeconomicus is presumably even more heroic and lives in a world where there is no need for consumer protection.

  6. 6.

    Such a regulation was at hand in Case 261/81, Rau [1982] ECR 3961.

  7. 7.

    Micklitz 2014, p. 101. On internal market considerations in the UCPD more generally, see 77 et seq. in the same chapter.

  8. 8.

    Without using this particular formula, many commentators agree. For a critique of the average consumer from a behavioural angle:Incardona and Poncibó 2007; Trzaskowski 2011; Scholes 2012. From a more legal perspective: Mak 2011. Weatherill, for his part, argues that, while the average consumer standard on its face expresses unrealistic behavioural assumptions, the case law of the Court still leaves room for relevant and substantiated behavioural arguments. Weatherill 2007, p. 133.

  9. 9.

    Many books in recent years have popularized the teachings of behavioural studies.Thaler and Sunstein 2008; Ariely 2008; Lehrer 2010; Kahneman 2011; Mullainathan and Shafir 2013.

  10. 10.

    As Micklitz argues, this philosophy is apparent in the UCPD test for unfair practices (“to appreciably impair the consumer’s ability to make an informed decision, thereby causing the consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise” (art. 2 e)): Micklitz 2014, p. 92.

  11. 11.

    This idea is aptly captured in the title of Ariely 2010.

  12. 12.

    Incardona and Poncibó 2007 and Trzaskowski 2011.

  13. 13.

    On this issue, albeit in a different field of law, see Quigley and Stokes 2014.

  14. 14.

    Tor 2008, pp. 240–241; Shafir 2013, p. 1.

  15. 15.

    For a direct account of the US experience, see Sunstein 2013. In the UK, a Behavioural Insights Team, better known as the ‘Nudge Unit’ has been created within the Cabinet Office: https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/behavioural-insights-team/. The French Government commissioned an expert report on the use of behavioural economics. Several regulatory agencies, in particular in the financial sector, experiment with the use of behavioural tools. More recently OECD has shown interest in the potential of behaviourally informed regulation. Lunn 2014.

  16. 16.

    Ciriolo 2011; DG Sanco publicises its use of behavioural economics on a dedicated webpage: http://ec.europa.eu/consumers/behavioural_economics/ (last visited on March 2, 2014).

  17. 17.

    See for example the report by the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority (EIOPA).

  18. 18.

    For an analysis of one typical judgment of the Court from a behavioural angle, see Sibony 2013.

  19. 19.

    The ‘present bias’ describe a common tendency to opt for a course of action that will result in immediate gratification even if this will entail a high cost at a later point in time. This tendency is at the root of procrastination. Economists who are interested in measuring the discounting rate people apply to future rewards when they choose a more immediate reward call this bias ‘hyperbolic discounting’. See e.g. Laibson 1997. Several studies conducted on students over the past decade show that the proportion of procrastinators is between 40 and 60 %. Bisin and Hyndman 2014, 27 and references cited.

  20. 20.

    On the political price for ignoring the reality of consumer/citizen’s preferences, see Purnhagen 2014.

  21. 21.

    Tor 2013, pp. 17–18 (explaining that prohibiting practices that are misleading for some but not all consumer may favor gullible consumers over more rational ones).

  22. 22.

    Sibony 2012a.

  23. 23.

    Directive 2005/29/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 May 2005 concerning unfair business-to-consumer commercial practices in the internal market, OJ 2005 L 149/22,“UCPD”.

  24. 24.

    Tor 2013, p. 15 sq.

  25. 25.

    UCPD, recital 18.

  26. 26.

    UCPD, recital 18.

  27. 27.

    Tor 2013, p. 18.

  28. 28.

    Tor 2008, p. 245 (citation omitted).

  29. 29.

    Monin 2003.

  30. 30.

    Kahneman and Shane 2002.

  31. 31.

    In particular disclosure requirements and rules on consumer contracts. See Luth 2010 and references cited at footnote 3.

  32. 32.

    Sibony 2012b.

  33. 33.

    Feldman 2009.

  34. 34.

    This idea emerged from my research on how insights from economics are integrated in case law in the field of competition law: Sibony 2008. For a concise exposition in plain French, Sibony 2010.

  35. 35.

    See inter alia: Micklitz 2014; Smits 2006.

  36. 36.

    The Court made this extremely clear in joined cases C-261/07 and C-299/07, VTB-VAB and others, [2009] ECR I-2949, paragraph 52. In this judgment, the Court ruled that Belgian law prohibiting joint selling per se was contrary to the directive, whose annex “exhaustively lists the only commercial practices which are prohibited in all circumstances and accordingly do not have to be assessed on a case-by-case basis” (paragraph 61). A string of cases applied the same reasoning to hold that various other national per se prohibitions of certain commercial practices violated the directive: Case C-304/08 Plus Warenhandelsgesellschaft [2010] ECR 217 (prohibition of commercial practices which make the participation of consumers in a lottery conditional on the purchase of goods or the use of services); Case C-522/08 Telekommunikacja Polska [2010] ECR I-2079 (prohibition of joint selling); Case C-540/08 Mediaprint Zeitungs- und Zeitschriftenverlag [2010] ECR I-10909 (prohibition on commercial practices making the offer of bonuses to consumers subject to the purchase of goods or services); Case C-288/10, Wamo [2011] ECR I-5835 and Case C-126/11, Inno (summary publication) (prohibition of announcements of price reductions during the weeks preceding the official sales period); Case C-343/12, Euronics Belgium (summary publication) (prohibition of selling goods at a loss).

  37. 37.

    As pointed out by the Office of Fair Trading during the transposition of the UCPD, the directive introduced several new concepts in UK Law. The OFT Guidance (2007), p. 4. The same holds true for most if not all member states. The intended novelty of autonomous EU law concepts carries the message that harmonised rules are different from previous national regimes. Micklitz 2014, p. 89 but it cannot de-activate national reasoning patterns.

  38. 38.

    For example, art. 2 e) provides that “‘to materially distort the economic behaviour of consumers’ means using a commercial practice to appreciably impair the consumer’s ability to make an informed decision, thereby causing the consumer to take a transactional decision that he would not have taken otherwise”.

  39. 39.

    On the risk of divergence between national interpretations, see Weatherill 2013, p. 239.

  40. 40.

    ‘The Directive takes as a benchmark the average consumer, who is reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant and circumspect, taking into account social, cultural and linguistic factors, as interpreted by the Court of Justice’ (emphasis added).

  41. 41.

    The phenomena addressed by Kahneman in his Nobel Prize lecture would probably be considered basic mechanisms, as would loss aversion. Kahneman 2002. One example of the relevance of hard-wired neural circuits for the effectiveness of commercial practices is ‘magic prices’ (prices that end in 9). Schindler and Wiman explain the fact that we tend to underestimate prices ending in 9 by the fact that, when storing numbers in our long term memory, we pay less attention to digits that are on the right hand side than to those on the left hand side. See also Guéguen 2009, 11–26. For a more general study, see Knutson et al. 2007.

  42. 42.

    Dawar and Parker 1994.

  43. 43.

    Most research on cultural differences deals with the individualism-collectivism distinction. For a summary, see Maheswaran and Shavitt 2000. Cultural difference are shown to exist in relation with commercial behaviour of consumers that could be relevant for the application of the UCPD, e.g., on impulsive buying: Kacen and Lee 2002. National courts appear to have a different perception of certain practices, in particular ‘aggressive practices’: Micklitz 2014, p. 113.

  44. 44.

    See. e.g. Lissowska 2011; Lunn 2014; Oliver 2013 (throughout the book). See also conference organised by DG Sanco on Sept 30 2013, Applying Behavioural Insights To Policy-Making: Results, Promises and Limitations. In the field of consumer law, see Bar-Gill 2012, p. 6 et sEq. ; Luth 2010, e.g., 66; Incardona and Poncibó 2007; Trzaskowski 2011; Scholes 2012. From a more legal perspective: Mak 2011. Weatherill, for his part, argues that, while the average consumer standard on its face expresses unrealistic behavioural assumptions, the case law of the Court still leaves room for relevant and substantiated behavioural arguments. Weatherill 2007, p. 133.

  45. 45.

    Oliver 2013, p. 13.

  46. 46.

    A better name is Law and Behavioural Sciences or ‘Behavioural Analysis of Law’, see Tor 2008 and his discussion on names for this approach at footnote 13. An important nuance between the two names is that ‘Behavioural Analysis of Law’ suggests that the law is the object of the behavioural analysis while the more neutral ‘Law and Behavioural Sciences’ allows for the possibility that the function of behavioural sciences may be to shed light on facts (rather than law), leaving it to legal analysis to decide whether and how this knowledge on facts could and should be incorporated. In my view, the part of the analysis consisting in connecting (any) scientific insights about facts to the law is not specifically behavioural.

  47. 47.

    Hahneman, foreword to Mullainathan and Shafir, IX.

  48. 48.

    ibid.

  49. 49.

    Joule and Beauvois 2002. The book sold so well that it is reported to have saved Grenoble University Press from bankruptcy. Its title translates as ‘Little Treatise of Manipulation for the Use of Honest People’.

  50. 50.

    Micklitz et al. 2011, p. 273.

  51. 51.

    Thanks to Roberto Galbiati (an economist) for drawing my attention to this point by expressing so clearly his doubts about the wisdom of my choice.

  52. 52.

    That behavioural economics is about modelling appears consensual. Altman 2012. The book opens with this sentence: “Behavioural economics is all about making our economic models […] more rigorous and realistic, by building them on solid empirical foundations” (emphasis in the original). For an illustration of rewriting a branch of economic theory (industrial organization) relaxing the rationality hypothesis, see Spiegler 2011.

  53. 53.

    As Hausman explains, it is not because economics truly believed that humans were rational in the narrow sense they defined that they chose to base their theory on homo oeconomicus. Rather, it is because they wanted their science to be ‘separate’ and formalised that needed consumers preference to have certain properties, failing which the utility functions would not be (mathematically) ‘well behaved’ and it would be impossible to calculate an equilibrium. In particular, that they needed preference to be convex (which translates as diminishing marginal utility or ‘the more apples you eat, the less pleasure you derive from an additional apple) and transitive (which translates as ‘if you prefer pears to apples and apples to oranges, you prefer pear to oranges’). Hausman 1992, Chaps. 1 and 2.

  54. 54.

    The phrase was coined by Thaler and Sunstein 2008, p. 6.

  55. 55.

    See e.g. Freedman and Fraser 1966.

  56. 56.

    A number of studies on influencing techniques in commercial contexts have appeared in marketing journals rather than psychology journals. See e.g.Anderson and Simester 2003. Studies published in psychology journals sometimes have a distinct marketing angle. See e.g. Aggarwal and Vaidyanathan 2002 or studies on effect of touching cited at footnote 70. Several authors quoted throughout this article work in marketing rather than psychology departments.Sub-conscious nature of influence does not mean of course that in cannot be observed. Indeed, neuromarketing, which has been developing in recent years, takes the study of purchasing decision a step further by literally observing, with the help of brain imaging techniques, how we react to different stimuli. For a good introduction to neuromarketing, see Lindstom 2008; Renvoisé and Morin 2007.

  57. 57.

    Opinion in Case C-435/11, CHS Tour, NYR, para. 29. I am not sure if naming this approach “top down” is very evocative, but the description of the approach is clearly accurate and consensual. See UK guidance document: Department for Business Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (2008), p. 12.

  58. 58.

    (Perceived) vagueness in the law is a feature that is conducive to imports from science—or extra-legal knowledge generally—into the law. On vagueness as a perceived (as opposed to intrinsic) feature of a text, see Black 1997, Chap. 1 (building on H.L.A. Hart). On vagueness as a pre-condition for porousness of the law, see Sibony 2010.

  59. 59.

    UCPD, art. 2 .paragraph 2.

  60. 60.

    Emphasis added.

  61. 61.

    Micklitz 2014, p. 91.

  62. 62.

    Article 2 (h) of UCPD defines “professional diligence” as “the standard of special skill and care which a trader may reasonably be expected to exercise towards consumers which is commensurate with either—(a) honest market practice in the trader’s field of activity, or (b) the general principle of good faith in the trader’s field of activity”. Commission Staff Working Document—Guidance on the Implementation/Application of Directive 2005/29/EC on Unfair Commercial Practices. In the UK, the OFT Guidance (cited at footnote 38) explains that “the word ‘special’ is not intended to require more than would reasonably be expected of a trader in their field of activity”. The Commission’ guidance notice does not attempt to further define or explain the standard of “professional diligence”.

  63. 63.

    Micklitz 2014, p. 91.

  64. 64.

    OFT Guidance, § 10.4, 47.

  65. 65.

    Effect of smile has long been established. Tidd and Lockard 1978 (effect of smile of the waitress on tips). Outside of a commercial context, effect of smile on submission has also been documented. See Guéguen and Fischer-Lokou 2004. More recently, the effect of smile in online communication has also been explored (and found positive): Guéguen 2009, pp. 210–212.

  66. 66.

    On this point, see Guéguen 2009, pp. 35–39.

  67. 67.

    Just asking “how are you doing?” has a significant effect on response to a subsequent request. For an account of experiment on this “trick question”, see Guéguen 2009, pp. 75–78.

  68. 68.

    Referring to ordinary meaning of words is a classical technique of legal interpretation. However, when European law is at stake, the use of this technique is more difficult because of the plurality of languages in which the law (here the directive) is translated. Some words or phrases (here “professional diligence”) may carry different connotations in different languages as well as different associations in different legal systems.

  69. 69.

    Several experiments have shown the influence of touch on consumer behaviour. In one experiment, consumers in a supermarket were offered slices of pizza to taste. If they took one, they were given a coupon and shown where the pizza could be found in the supermarket. The consumers who were touched were more likely to take the pizza and to purchase it than those who were only addressed verbally. Smithet al. 1982. In another experiment, waiters in a restaurant touched some of the consumers who were dining. Couples where one person was touched gave significantly higher tips than those were neither was touched. The effect of touch varied only very slightly according to sex (both of the diner and of the waiter). Hornik 1992.

  70. 70.

    See Brenkert 2008, 27 et seq.

  71. 71.

    Feldman 2009, pp. 13–14, 119.

  72. 72.

    UCPD, recital 18.

  73. 73.

    Art. 6, paragraph 1. Emphasis added. This paragraph is followed by a list of items in relation to which information given to the consumer can be misleading: (a) the existence or nature of the product; (b) the main characteristics of the product […], (c) the extent of the trader’s commitments […], (d) the price or the manner in which the price is calculated, or the existence of a specific price advantage; (e) the need for a service, part, replacement or repair; (f) the nature, attributes and rights of the trader […]; (g) the consumer’s rights […] or the risks he may face.

  74. 74.

    Art. 6, paragraph 2.

  75. 75.

    See above Sect. 2.2.

  76. 76.

    Commission Staff Working Document—Guidance on the Implementation/Application of Directive 2005/29/EC on Unfair Commercial Practices SEC (2009) 1666, hereinafter ‘Guidance notice’, 32.

  77. 77.

    Guidance notice, 32.

  78. 78.

    Guidance notice, 34.

  79. 79.

    Guidance notice, 36.

  80. 80.

    Guidance notice, 36.

  81. 81.

    Art. 7, paragraph 1. Emphasis added.

  82. 82.

    On the first aspect, see Micklitz 2014, p. 102.

  83. 83.

    In this respect, we read the text of the directive as being more permeable to insights from psychology than Incardona and Poncibò indicate Incardona and Poncibò 2007, p. 33, referring to recital 18 of the directive and asking whether the admission that the average consumer must be appraised taking into account social, cultural and linguistic factors might allow courts to consider the average consumer as an emotional consumer rather than just a “reasonably well informed and reasonably observant and circumspect” consumer (the classical Court formula since case C210/996, Gut Springenheide, ECR[1998] I-4757, para. 31).

  84. 84.

    Article 7, paragraph 2.

  85. 85.

    These techniques, to which we return below in detail, include: low-ball, lure, “that’s-not-all”, foot-in-the-door, foot-in-the-mouth, fear and relief.

  86. 86.

    Yoon and Danziger 2007.

  87. 87.

    This phrase is borrowed from Freedman and Fraser 1966.

  88. 88.

    For a clear account, see Cialdini 2007 or Cialdini 2009, respectively at 18 et seq., 51 et seq., 97 et seq., 141 et seq., 174 et seq., 198 et seq.

  89. 89.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 17–21; Cialdini 2009, pp. 18–50.

  90. 90.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 57; Cialdini 2009, pp. 51–96.

  91. 91.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 116; Cialdini 2009, pp. 97–140.

  92. 92.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 167; Cialdini 2009, pp. 141–173.

  93. 93.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 208–220; Cialdini 2009, pp. 174–197.

  94. 94.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 238; Cialdini 2009, pp. 198–226.

  95. 95.

    This definition was originally proposed by Kiesler in Kiesler 1971. See Joule and Beauvois 2002, pp. 74; Guéguen 2004, pp. 141.

  96. 96.

    Cialdini 2007, at 67 writes: “Each of the strategies is intended to get us to take some action or make some statement that will trap us into later compliance through consistency pressure”.

  97. 97.

    Joule and Beauvois 2002; Freedman and Fraser 1966.

  98. 98.

    Cialdini 2007, pp. 67–103.

  99. 99.

    A classical experiment in this regard is that of Arkes and Blumer 1985. In this experiment, students could sign up for two different week-end trips. For the first one, they had to pay $ 100 and only $ 50 for the second one, which was more appealing. It turns out that they have to choose between the two as both trips will be organized the same week-end. Having paid the non-refundable sum of $ 150, students should rationally choose the more appealing week-end. Yet, the majority chooses the more expensive trip. Joule and Beauvois 2002, at 41 generalize this result and explain that, in order to effectively trap someone in a spending spiral (what they call “abstruse trap” (“piège abscons” in the French original), the following conditions have to be met: (i) the subject must have decided to engage in some form of spending in order to reach a certain goal (e.g. wait for the night bus in order to get home); (ii) she must be uncertain as to whether the goal may be reached in this way (there may be no more busses tonight); (iii) the individual must feel that each additional spending (e.g. waiting longer rather than hailing a passing cab) will increase the probability of reaching the goal through the preferred means and (iv) the subject must not have initially set a limit to her spending (how long she would be ready to wait).

  100. 100.

    Guéguen and Pascual 2000, 2002, 2005.

  101. 101.

    Jacob et al. 2003.

  102. 102.

    See e.g .Joule and Beauvois 2002, pp. 74–78; Guéguen 2004, p. 168.

  103. 103.

    It should be noted here that one (isolated) study shed doubt on whether the efficacy of low ball actually rests on commitment: Burger and Petty 1981.

  104. 104.

    Freedman and Fraser 1966.

  105. 105.

    The study controlled for several factors and there were several variants in the scenarios used.

  106. 106.

    Cialdini et al. 1978.

  107. 107.

    Guéguen et al. 2002. In this study, as in the initial 1978 article, the authors controlled for gender effect and showed that there is none.

  108. 108.

    Motes and Woodside 1979. Motes and Woodside used a promotional offer on nail polish bottles. Variations of a special offer were presented to female buyers in a department store (reduced price/reduced price for two/three bottles) and clients were then told that the reduced price was higher than initially announced. Clients did not buy significantly more nail polish than in the control condition, i.e. when initially informed about the correct promotional price.

  109. 109.

    Joule et al. 1989. In this study, students are recruited to participate in a rather interesting and well-paid experiment. Once they have accepted, they are asked to come to the laboratory. There, they are informed that the interesting research has been completed, but that they can participate in another experiment, for which they will not be paid. The results show that subjects accept more often to take part in the unpaid experiment when this technique is used than when it is not.

  110. 110.

    Guéguen and Jacob 2006. The authors placed a pair of shoes at a promotional price in a shoe shop window. When a consumer enters the shop and asks for her size, a salesperson explains that this size is no longer available, but presents a similar model, which is sold at the normal tag price. Using this technique, more pair of shoes are sold than in the absence of lure.

  111. 111.

    European legal commentators commonly refer to the general definition of unfair practices contained in article 5 of the directive as the “general clause”.

  112. 112.

    Collins 2010, p. 97. According to Micklitz, the general clause only applies in ‘extreme and obvious cases’, Micklitz 2014, p. 95.

  113. 113.

    We call “sub-tests” tests designed by courts in order to apply a broad legal test, such as that of article 5 of the directive. A sub-test in this context could be a criterion or an articulated series of criteria which courts would hold relevant for the purposes of appraising whether a commercial practice is misleading or otherwise unfair.

  114. 114.

    Vesterdorf 2006 and Sibony 2008, p. 446 et seq.

  115. 115.

    See Sect. 4.1.

  116. 116.

    This deliberate choice is part of the disciplinary identity of modern economics. See Hausman 1992, Chap. 6 “The structure and strategy of economics”.

  117. 117.

    Burger 1986.

  118. 118.

    This presupposes that experimental results may translate as a statement about how the “average consumer” behaves. At first sight, this transfer seems plausible, but this point may need further elaboration.

  119. 119.

    Cialdini et al. 1975. In this study, the large request consisted asking the subject to volunteer to help delinquent juveniles for two years, the small request was to chaperon a group of under-privileged children for one visit to a zoo.

  120. 120.

    Pascual and Guéguen 2006. This study was staged in bars. A girl asked other consumers if they could pay for the drink her boyfriend had not paid before leaving the bar (explaining she didn’t have enough money to pay his drink). After the subject refused, the girl asked for some change to contribute to the unpaid bill. The study showed that this works better than directly asking for change.

  121. 121.

    Mowen and Cialdini 1980. In this study, subjects were initially asked to participate in a survey and answer a long questionnaire (for up to two hours). After the subject had declined, the experimenter would make the second request (target behaviour), which consisted in completing a short survey of 15 min; Ebster and Neumayr 2008. This study took place in a mountain hut. When subjects passed by the entrance, they were approached by a female experimenter who invited them to buy some home-made cheese. Subjects were first asked to buy a piece of cheese weighing about two pounds and, after they declined, were proposed a piece of one pound.

  122. 122.

    Such as self-perception or authority of the person making the offer.

  123. 123.

    Millar 2002.

  124. 124.

    UCPD, recital 18.

  125. 125.

    Emphasis added.

  126. 126.

    Point 5 of the annex.

  127. 127.

    Point 7 of the annex.

  128. 128.

    Point 15 of the annex.

  129. 129.

    Cialdini 2007, p. 238; Cialdini 2009, pp. 198–226. The practice prohibited under point 18 of the annex could possibly also be linked to artificial creation of an impression of scarcity, but it is less clear.

  130. 130.

    Point 6 of the annex.

  131. 131.

    Prohibited under point 8 in the annex.

  132. 132.

    Point 20 of the annex.

  133. 133.

    Council Directive 84/450/EEC concerning misleading and comparative advertising, OJ L 250, 19.9.1984, p. 17, amended by Directive 97/55/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council, OJ L 290, 23.10.1997, p. 18. These practices are listed under number 1 to 4 in the annex.

  134. 134.

    Practices listed under points 9–14, 16, 17, 19 and 21–23.

  135. 135.

    On the fundamental role of analogies in thought in general, see Hofstadter and Sander 2011.

  136. 136.

    This point was already quite clear from the text of the directive, but was confirmed by the Court in CHS Tour. Case C-435/11, CHS Tour, NYR. In this case, Team 4 Travel, a tour operator who organized skiing trips in Austria had entered exclusive contracts with several accommodation providers. In its brochure, it mentioned that these accommodations were “exclusive” and explained the meaning of the term. In breach of the contracts with Team 4 Travel, some of the accommodation providers rented out rooms to a competing operator (CHS) during the exclusivity periods. This resulted in the brochure containing inaccurate information unbeknownst to Team 4 Travel. Before the Austrian courts, the question arose whether it could rely on its compliance with professional diligence to escape the prohibition of misleading practices under article 6 of the directive.

  137. 137.

    In consumer law, the burden of proof is sometimes reversed, but it is not the case here. See Micklitz 2014, p. 121.

  138. 138.

    Under article 5 (b), the test is whether a practice “materially distorts or is likely to materially distort the economic behaviour with regard to the product of the average consumer whom it reaches or to whom it is addressed, or of the average member of the group when a commercial practice is directed to a particular group of consumers”. Under article 5(3), “Commercial practices which are likely to materially distort the economic behaviour only of a clearly identifiable group of consumers who are particularly vulnerable to the practice or the underlying product because of their mental or physical infirmity, age or credulity in a way which the trader could reasonably be expected to foresee, shall be assessed from the perspective of the average member of that group.”

  139. 139.

    See the discussion in Micklitz 2014, pp. 98–100.

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  141. 141.

    N. Helberger, Forms matter: Informing consumers effectively (report for BEUC), sept. 2013, http://www.beuc.org/publications/x2013_089_upa_form_matters_september_2013.pdf (last visited nov 3 2014)

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Sibony, AL. (2015). Can EU Consumer Law Benefit From Behavioural Insights?. In: Mathis, K. (eds) European Perspectives on Behavioural Law and Economics. Economic Analysis of Law in European Legal Scholarship, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-11635-8_5

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