GLOBALIZAÇÃO ECONÔMICA E OS PROGRAMAS DE FIDELIDADE NO BRASIL: A IMPORTÂNCIA DA PROTEÇÃO JURÍDICA DO CONSUMIDOR PARA A SUSTENTABILIDADE

Abstract

JAQUES, Abner da Silva. ECONOMIY GLOBALIZATION AND LOYALTY PROGRAMS IN BRAZIL: The importance of legal consumer protection for sustainability. 209 fls. Dissertação (Mestrado em Direito) – Faculdade de Direito, Universidade Federal de Mato Grosso do Sul, 2021.

Both technological and economic globalization processes have influenced the emergence and improvement of entrepreneurial activities, getting them increasingly comprehensive and complex in their operations. Differently from previous moments, the financial market is interconnected in global and local relations, operating in a free trade perspectivity — which was widely spread after the USA victory in the Cold War. This situation, furthermore, has made developing countries and their companies — which is the case of Brazil — bring in experiences to foment the inter economic order. In this scenario, as a way to increase the marketing structures, the loyalty programs — also known as ‘flyer programs’ or ‘reward programs’ — were adopted with the focus in inviting the consumer to establish frequently contractual relations in exchanging awards as it’s more interesting to the companies getting the clients’ attendance than picking up the news in the market. It occurs that, over the years, the business activity became extremely complex and profitable, including the creation of a new work branch, specific and direct, whose object is only the loyalty program administrations, starting from the establishment of a broad partnership network. Under this perspective, the objective centers on the analysis of loyalty programs’ legal effects in Brazil, in view of understanding how free enterprise in this field develops at the expense of the importance of consumer’s protection. The justification is related to the perception that, in Brazil, the legislative instruments are not able to delimit the utilization, the legal nature and neither the legal and economic impacts to the clients, as a result of the complex framework in the market. Thus, over the legal uncertainties that set up this way of working, the major problem around this research is responding to the following question: in the Human Rights environment and the globalized economy, what are the loyalty program’s impacts to the consumer rights and how they influence in the materialization of sustainability in it economic and social branches? The employed methods in the research are: (i) inductive, once that, based on analyses of companies specific regulations, it searches to identify the general guidelines and opinions about the working out and structure that characterize the business development in Brazil; (ii) deductive, that starts from the abstraction of the emergence of models and economic activities that results from the economic globalization process, particularizing them by identifications of : their impacts in consume related rights and in order to materialize sustainability, and; (iii) hypothetical deductive, by reason that the perception of the existence of a gap in the knowledge about the legal nature of the contract made between the loyalty program manager and the consumer, as well as the point/miles. The research is bibliographic and documental, with exploratory, descriptive, applied and interventionist purposes. In conclusion, the activity with loyalty programs in Brazil has a complex structure that, given the lack of solid information on its development and the adoption of unfair terms, allows negative impacts on consumer protection and business competition. This situation, in turn, despite making it more difficult for Brazil to help implement the Sustainable Agenda, may be better suited to the demand for economic and social responsibility from companies, combined with an attentive posture of the State in monitoring this market and, if necessary, regulate it.