No abstract

In view of recent pose in this article is and Antoni Brack Enschede, the Netherlands European legal developments, our purto position customer complaint manage- Defensive marketingIn order to expand market share and increase sales most firms spend much effort in attempts to attract new customers. This "offensive" objective in marketing strategy diment as an essential instrument for a defensive marketing strategy, specifically to prevent legal problems in the fields of product liability and product safety.rects marketing "actions" (Bonoma, 1985) such as promotion and pricing. Recent economic and forthcoming political developments in Europe will make it difficult to meet such an objective. Many firms operate in mature or shrinking markets in which it is hard and costly to generate new customers as price and quality differences between products are becoming less clear. In addition, competition from both domestic and foreign rivals will intensify in the newly formed internal market in Europe. Therefore, it becomes important and profitable to retain current customers and to increase their purchase frequency. These developments are parallelled by a number of recent developments in the legal field. Particularly with regards to product safety and liability, European regulations have changed considerably. As a result of these developments, companies are more likely to be confronted with customer liability claims in the future. Ways of defense against potential liability claims will become a major issue. From a marketing-strategic point of view, the focus is shifting from offensive to defensive. While offensive marketing focuses on generating new customers, the defensive marketing strategy aims at building up a relationship with customers that leads to customer loyalty and repurchase behaviour and

European product law consists of three parts: product liability law, a general product safety regulation and an increasing number of provisions with requirements on product group level. In recent years this third part has been revised in order to speed up the completion of the European single market. This article describes the development from the negative integration of member states' markets to the positive integration by supranational law. The CE-mark is the symbol of the new approach to the harmonization of European product safety requirements. The modular system of conformity assessment is an important characteristic of harmonization-based product law. Advantages and disadvantages of the new European product law are discussed from the perspective of ensuring the future of the consumers' basic right to safety in an increasingly global and therefore international market.

This paper researches a number of similarities and differences between European legal regimens with regard to food and non–food product safety, based on the assumption that these regimens may have overly diverged. A tentative conclusion is that there are enough similarities to justify an effort to reconcile the two regimens. The point of departure for this research (Section 1) is an overview of sources of law laid down in the EC Treaty for drawing up legislation in the area of product safety (food and non–food). In Section 2, the Product Safety Law acquis is presented; this is the cumulative body of European law implemented so far, based on these sources. EC–Treaty articles constitute the legal basis for the Product Safety Law acquis, which in turn forms the legal basis for policies. Therefore, Section 3 deals with the Commission’s current policy intentions: indications of what can be expected in this area in years to come. A core characteristic of the Product Safety Law acquis is the precautionary principle (Section 4), which refers to safety risk management, intended to prevent the marketing of defective products. Should preventive risk management measures fail, the producer’s ability to trace already marketed hazardous products is crucial in order to limit liability, as explained in Section 5. Section 6 highlights an important legal presumption in non–food safety law. The safety of non–food products is presumed if production took place according to standardised norms. A long term European law–reform programme is introduced in Section 7. This so–called Better Regulation programme is a perfect opportunity to adjust the Product Safety Law acquis to new insights. Section 8 summarizes our observations and findings. Section 9 discusses the utility of the Confident Consumer concept. Because it seems disadvantageous to focus on the differences between food and non–food safety rules, the possible advantages of a policy and law reform are assessed. Therefore Section 10 concludes to attune both parts of product safety law to the similarities instead of focusing on differences. Maintaining the dichotomy is disadvantageous to progress.