GMAT Essays (AWA)

"A business should not be held responsible for providing customers with complete information about its products or services; customers should have the responsibility of gathering information about the products or services they may want to buy."

Discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.


The argument that businesses should not be held responsible for providing customers with complete information about products and services is disingenuous for several reasons. Essentially, the argument empowers businesses to arbitrarily define what is a reasonable or appropriate degree of candor in dealing with consumers, which absolves the business of any responsibility to adhere to a uniformly and legally defined standard of openness in dealing with consumers. Such an approach on the part of the business is impractical and, in some ways, it is a threat to the efficiently of marketplaces.

Clearly, there is always data about products and services that customers cannot be expected to know. Given that ongoing scientific, technological, economic, marketing and business management research yields increasingly sophisticated products and services for consumers, to expect the customer to know everything about what they are buying is tantamount to expecting the customer to function as a specialist concerning the product or service at hand. To expect customers to have this degree of expertise is to burden them with the need to expend valuable time and resources researching products and services, which would inconvenience the customer and probably undermine his or her willingness to purchase the product or service.

Also, bestowing upon the business the arbitrary right to define standards of candor in dealing with customers is opening a potential Pandora's Box of economic chicanery and manipulation. A market philosophy such as this would -- especially if endorsed by society -- validate a culture of predatory sales practices. For reasons mentioned earlier in this essay, it is unreasonable to burden the consumer with the responsibility to defend themselves against such practices. To maintain the efficiency and integrity of marketplace functioning, the business must unreservedly accept responsibility for fully informing the customer of what he or she is buying, otherwise business transactions are susceptible of deteriorating to the level of fraud.

The argument is weak also because, if businesses are not responsible for providing customers with complete information about products and services, customer confidence in the marketplace will be destroyed. If customers are not confident about the value of their purchases because they are underinformed about the product or service, eventually customers will stop spending their money and economic activity will atrophy. Thus, the principle espoused by the argument is dangerous because it insidiously threatens the integrity of the business-customer relationship, which is a development that in turn will weaken if not destroy the marketplace as a whole.

In summary, the argument is weak because it essentially justifies giving businesses a disingenuous reason for avoiding candor in dealing with customers. The argument is analogous to drawing a line in the sand that is supposed to justify what separates reasonable degrees of business candor from that which is unreasonable, while simultaneously bestowing upon the business the power and potential to redraw the line anytime and anywhere it pleases. Standards of candor imposed on businesses in dealing with consumers should be manifest, far reaching, concretely defined and unalterable to avoid the situations described in this essay.