不當廣告로 인한 소비자피해의 私法的 救濟에 관한 연구 -인쇄물광고를 중심으로-

Abstract

These days, consumers receive substantial amount of information about goods from advertisements. Consumers are highly unlikely to judge, assess, and discern objectively with his or her confined knowledge in a contemporary economic society. Accordingly, consumers are very much at the mercy of the information, i.e. advertisement, provided by business operators specialized in certain products. Sometimes, however, business operators intentionally give false impression on customers to boost the sales of their own goods by employing methods such as false advertisement, exaggerated advertisement and deceit advertisement. As a result, cases where the actual goods or services do not correspond with the advertisements although consumers have trusted the business operators’ advertisements and concluded their contracts are being caused at an alarming rate. Such cases are generally in two forms; the case where performing as the information given on the advertisements is possible, and the case where performing as the information given on the advertisements is not possible. In the latter case, demanding the business operator to perform as the advertisements is virtually impossible and if the contractual relationship is sustained, monetary damage to consumer increases and its retrieval may not be possible. In such case, consumers first have to withdraw from the contractual relationship, i.e. the confinement of contractual duty. The methods to withdraw from the contractual relationship for those who have trusted the deceptive advertisements and concluded their contracts include revocation of the expression due to frauds, revocation of the expression due to mistake, and cancellation of a contract due to default. In the former case, performing as the information given on the advertisements by business operators is the most desirable solution to consumers. The reason why consumers concluded their contracts is that they expected acquisition of goods or services claimed on advertisements. The means to exact performance from the business operators as information given on the advertisement include warranty liability against defects and default liability. Thus, this paper has contemplated on the methods to exact performance from business operators as the advertisements or to withdraw from the contractual relationship for those who concluded their contracts based on deceptive advertisements.