The opening of the Aeon shopping mall not only changed the local people’s life in Cambodia but also gave a big impact on business.
Following Aeon mall, there is another foreign-owned shopping mall opening soon, but when something comes into fashion in Cambodia, its imitation products or services appear one after another which results in an excess of supply and declination of the business.
That’d be how a new culture is born in Cambodia whereas I’d like Cambodian people to develop their information literacy skills. Nowadays, some little-grounded information could be spread largely with no doubt just because “many people say so” or because “it’s on Facebook”.
The rise of the population, economic development, and an increase in income might result in an increase in fraud, targeting Cambodian people. People have low awareness of personal information now, so our personal information might already have been gathered somehow without us knowing it.
There are always people who attempt to do bad things to people in any country. Those crimes are still just like snatching or theft mostly in Cambodia so far, but each crime will be more ingenious in the future. In that way, you’ll be the only one to protect yourself against it.
However, while safety and security are considered very important, I don’t want this country to be like Japan which is not really easy to live in, having a lot of rules and regulations. Once an incident happens like food intoxication, things that are related to it will be prohibited or regulated. If some foreign material is mixed into a product or food, all of the product or food in the country will be collected, and manufacturing and selling of the product will be prohibited. Of course, the management system that caused such problems must be examined and improved, but does it need to be spread much via SNS? Does a company not correspond seriously to a problem if it’s not spread a lot on SNS? Does the Government really have to do legal control over it?
There’s definitely a difference in power between an individual and a company, so there needs consumer protection to some extent, but if it’s too much, it could rather result in inconvenience for consumers or make the living of people uncomfortable.
At that point, in Cambodia, you’re the only one who can protect yourself, and you’re the only one to be responsible for yourself, otherwise, it’s not too much to say that you can’t survive in this country.
Sometimes I feel like having a little more sincere deal by local people, but still, my life here is congenial to my tastes somehow.
I was getting a little off track, but anyways, if consumers can see the merit and the demerit of products, inferior products and companies would disappear spontaneously. If cheapness is the first priority and the price competition becomes fierce, there’ll be an unreasonable cost reduction that could cause accidents or acts of dishonesty. Also, appropriate claims can help companies improve, but unethical or unreasonable claims don’t make anything good for both consumers and companies.
The growth of the Cambodian people as consumers is the key to Cambodia’s economic development, and I hope for its continued growth.