On The Protection Of Consumers' Rights And Interests In Network Group Purchasing

With the rapid development of Internet technology and the growing popularity of e-commerce in recent years, online group purchasing has attracted more and more consumers and greatly changed people’s consumption concept and trading habits by more attractive prices than traditional online shopping, abundant shopping options and features of fashion and convenience. In October 2013 online shopping has been included in the protection scope of the revised "Consumer Protection Law", stepping up efforts to protect consumer rights and interests in the form of legislation. However, due to the particularities and current unstandardized market of online group purchasing in China, the legitimate rights and interests of consumers are often violated in the online transaction. In view of this, starting from my own infringement cases of online group purchasing, I summarize the characteristics and the subject of legal relation of online group purchasing, analyze the main conditions of infringement cases of online group purchasing and the status quo of the system of consumer rights and interests protection, and attempt to offer suggestions to complete the system of consumer rights and interests protection, optimize rights and perfect mechanism by drawing lessons from the advanced e-commerce legislation in developed countries, expecting to provide reference for the improvement of the protection of consumer rights and interests in China.Apart from the introduction and conclusion, the paper is divided into five sections.Part Ⅰ:Overview of online group purchasing. From my own experience of one case, I mainly analyze the concept, characteristics and subject of legal relation of online group purchasing.Part Ⅱ:Main conditions of infringement cases of online group purchasing. Although China’s "Consumer Protection Law" gives consumers the right to nine, the security right, the information right, the air trade right, and compensation right are violated in the field of online group purchasing.Part Ⅲ:Status quo of the system of consumer rights and interests protection. Describing the relevant provisions of existing laws and regulations to protect consumers’ rights legislation, I analyze the system defects of the protection of consumer rights and interests in China in terms that consumer protection powers and responsibilities of administrative bodies is unknown, the dispute settlement mechanism is not smooth, the power to set consumer protection is not perfect.Part Ⅳ:Legislation experience from the advanced e-commerce legislation in developed countries. Legislation experiences of online group purchasing in European Union, the United States, Japan and other countries are introduced here.Part Ⅴ:Improvement of the system design of consumer rights and interests protection in China. On the basis of the defects of the existing protection system of online group purchasing, I offer suggestions to optimize and set the consumer rights in a scientific way, perfect the regulatory mechanisms of online group purchasing, and improve dispute settlement mechanism of consumer rights protection.