Harm against consumers in Hong Kong

Abstract

In this paper, harm against consumers in Hong Kong was studied. One business selling practice, fight overbooking in airline industry was chosen as the research focus. This research examines the practitioners’ and consumers’ perceptions of flight overbooking practice in Hong Kong. In airline industry, flight overbooking is performed to maximize the loading of the flight. It refers to the business selling practice that the total number of ticket sold greater than the physical capacity of an aeroplane. This selling method is to compensate the passengers no show (Ta Kung Pao, 2013; Jul14). The paper consists of five parts, including introduction, literature review, methodology, data analysis and conclusion. For introduction part, the background of fight overbooking practice is covered and the research questions were listed. The research questions studied whether the phenomenon can be explained by two criminological concepts, social harms and techniques of neutralization (Sykes and Mataz 1957). The harms against consumers were assessed and whether practitioners adopted technique of neutralizations was studied. Also, participants’ personal experiences involved in this malpractice were studied. Literature review part covers three main components, (i) what is ‘fight overbooking’; (ii) a global and comparative review of fight overbooking in United Kingdom, Australian and New Zealand, United States, and (iii) key theories and concepts that are useful for interpret this phenomenon (social harm and techniques of neutralization). Qualitative method and semi-structure interview was adopted in this research study and difficulties encounters were included in methodology part. Lastly, the data analysis part, even not consumers and practitioners perceived fight overbooking as always harmful, the social harms were reported from some of the consumers and practitioners which involves physical, emotional and psychological harms (Hillyard & Tombs 2007). The social harms were found individual and hence sometimes not easily identified and hence consumers even not aware they were victims. In addition, the practitioners were found adopting techniques of neutralization in rationalize their business malpractice. In conclusion part, possible future research questions and implications for raising public awareness of consumers’ right were made.