The Swiss Commission for Fairness is not running out of work
Last year, the Swiss Commission for Fair Trading had to deal with 382 cases. Never before have there been so many. More than half of all cases concerned "aggressive sales methods," as the Commission points out in its 2010 activity report.
Since 2005, the members of the Fairness Commission and the technical experts have had to deal with a steadily increasing number of cases. In 2010, too, there were more than in the previous year. The number of proceedings has increased regularly and continuously since 2005 from 234 to 382, as the commission announced on Monday.
In parallel with the increase in the number of proceedings, the number of cases involving "aggressive sales methods" has once again risen sharply. Already in the previous year, 34% of all submissions concerned this procedure. And in 2010, a further increase to 52.8% had to be registered. In other words, more than half of the cases that had to be dealt with by the Fair Trading Commission in 2010 concerned "aggressive sales methods". A comparison with previous years is interesting: As recently as 2004, only 10.5% of the proceedings concerned "aggressive sales methods".
The telephone/fax medium accounts for the largest proportion of proceedings (53.9%) among the communication media. Since 2008, however, there has been a marked decrease in the percentage of media used for proceedings against posters (5.3%) and direct marketing (12.6%).
Once again, the number of cases involving "sexist advertising" declined. The proportion fell from 12.9% in 2006 to 4.1% in 2010. "It is possible that the discussion about sexism in advertising, which has received a great deal of attention in the media, has sensitized the advertising industry," the Commission comments.
The activity report (German and French) can be ordered from Fair-advertising.ch can be downloaded or ordered in printed form from the Foundation Secretariat on +41 44 211 40 11.
