Businesses

The "giveaway provision" of the Consumer Protection Act concerns all marketing in which some kind of additional benefit is offered to the consumer.

An essential feature of additional benefit offers is that the consumer must buy something in order to get the benefit. The benefit may be a combined offer put together from separate products, a giveaway added to a purchase, or a quantity discount in which a certain quantity of one product is sold for a lower total price.

This provision, however, does not apply to a product combination designed and packaged as a single entity and intended for sale as a discrete product. Examples of this might include a set of tools or cosmetics.

A giveaway must not be the main advertising message. When giveaways are used in marketing, the following must be clearly indicated:

• What the offer includes: If goods or services are being offered for sale together, for example, explain what is included in the offer. It is sufficient to mention the types of items; a detailed description is not necessary.

• Not for free, but in addition to: A giveaway cannot be referred to as "free" or as a "gift" in advertising. This is because a giveaway is never free, but requires the purchase of the primary product at a cost.

• Value of the offer: For a combined offer, the value is the difference between the price of the product package and the total itemized prices of the included products. An offer like this must indicate not only the price of the total package, but also the price of each of its components when purchased separately. If a product is not available for separate purchase, its calculated price must be stated. The value of a giveaway is indicated in the same manner as it would be for combined offers. If the price of a giveaway is less than 10 euro when purchased separately, the value does not need to be stated.

• Provisions concerning possibility to gain from an offer: A requirement of fundamental importance is to state the terms of an offer. After looking at an advertisement just briefly, a consumer should be able to decide if he or she can benefit from the offer.

• The duration of the offer is particularly important: If the offer is available for a limited time, the beginning and ending times of the offer period must be stated. The frequently seen limitation "offer valid for 10 days", for instance, is not always suitable. The advertisement should state the actual dates unless the start date of the offer can be determined from the date of newspaper publication, for example.

• Quantity limitations, etc.: "While supplies last" is also unsuitable as an automatic time limit on an offer because it does not enable the customer to determine whether an effort to get the offered benefit is likely to be worthwhile. Other limitations may include a cap on the number of benefit packages sold per customer. This should be mentioned in the advertisement.

Note: A seller is liable for the safety – and any defects – of giveaway items as well.

Pay particular attention to children and young people

Children cannot assess the value of a giveaway in the same way as adults can. A giveaway of insignificant monetary value can be more attractive to a child than the primary product, which makes it easier to affect the purchase decision with a giveaway. Therefore, special care needs to be taken to ensure that when products that appeal to children are marketed, a giveaway is not presented as the main thing of interest to a child in advertising or packaging.

Guidelines for Consumer Protection:

 Loyalty marketing and loyalty programmes