to buy a house It is true of course that all the conventional and unconventional methods of sales promotion, salesmanship at all levels, public and trade advertising, sales literature, and the rest can go a long way towards the creation of an image. These are being used with increasing vigour but in the end it is a compound of planned marketing, of fitness for purpose, and the belief that their employees and especially the sales personnel have in a service or product that wins the consumer to its use. Management, in concerning itself with consumers, has a great responsibility in those matters. Advertising claims must be honest, promotion must be balanced and the sales effort sustained. It is interesting that there has been a marked increase, since the war, in the initiative taken by the consumers themselves to make sure that managements who are serving them are, so to speak, serving them properly. Normally a manufacturer has a large organization behind him whereas the consumer has precious little backing other than his or her own judgement. Weights and Measures, Safety, Standards, informative labelling, reliable performance, advertising claims this is a small sample of subjects upon which, surprisingly, the consumer aided by a highly articulate Press, Consumer Protection movements, and a host of other devices now demands help and advice. It is arguable that powerful groups like the Consumers' Union in the United States, Statens Konsumentrad in Sweden, or the Consumer bodies in Great Britain should never have been necessary and that managements should be for ever on the alert to see that they, rather than consumers, are in charge of the situation. On the other hand there must be many instances where a properly organized consumers' council can give invaluable advice to management whose attitude should be to encourage such help. Managers, living daily with their problems, tend to be too close to them. A mixture of cooperation from and service to the consumer should be a management ideal. Management is as much dependent on consumers as on shareholders and employees. It is a trinity of interests. Management must keep in proportion the assertion that because freedom of choice is desirable in a relatively free economy it is therefore up to the consumer to exercise his or her own judgement. The argument continues along the lines of assuming that any sort of consumer protection is an unwarranted intrusion into the citadels of free enterprise. As a postscript to all this, it is often the sanguine conclusion that because bad merchandise or ineffective services are bad business, the consumer need never fear exploitation. This is specious and it doesn't work. Shoddy goods and services that are incomplete or illconceived are the direct consequences of this material age when so many consumers, suddenly aware of what money can buy, are fobbed off with the second best because they, the consumers, know no better. It would be nice to think that the second best is doomed to a short life. personal finance