The Great Coalition plans to strengthen evidence-based consumer policy in Germany and is financing two new institutions to systematically monitor consumer markets: The watchdogs for financial markets and for the digital world. Both watchdogs will base their work on consumer complaints submitted at the federal consumer centers and will periodically report to relevant public oversight authorities. Yet, what has been criticized is that consumer complaints submitted to the federal consumer centers only represent the tip of the iceberg, since smaller complaints will most probably not be reported and hence captured by the system.
Against this backdrop, ConPolicy-Director Prof Dr Christian Thorun together with Marc Egger (Insius GmbH and University of Cologne) gives a talk on the potential of Social Media Monitoring for a more comprehensive complaint monitoring in Germany at a workshop held today by the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung.
Other speakers at the workshop are Klaus Müller (Director Federation of German Consumer Organisations), Prof Dr Gert G. Wagner (German Institute for Economic Research and member of the Mitglied im Advisory Body for Consumer Policy), Prof Dr Dr h. c. Bernd Stauss (Catholic University of Eichstätt), Gabriele Hahn (Federal Financial Supervisory Authority) as well as Kornelia Hagen (German Institute for Economic Research).