Tip to DACO: Reducing Corporate-Consumer Information Asymmetry (3)*

    For a corporate 'consumer credit score'  to work, it has to have teeth, some type of legal grounding that takes place immediately with negative repercussions to the offending company.  Otherwise, it would be just one more bit of information, without real-world function.  Again, a comparison to the real 'consumer credit score' is suggestive of what a 'corporate product score' could look like.

    If an irresponsible consumer drastically increases his/her spending beyond his/her means, which will inevitably lead the consumer to be unable to pay off his/her debts, companies will be thusly warned about the high likelihood of a financial loss in the giving of credit to the bad consumer, such as a loan or a mortgage.  In other words, corporations sharply minimize their losses by coordinating information amongst themselves about the consumer's widely dispersed financial activities across various geographical and commercial sectors.  In real world simple terms, companies use a bad credit score to deny credit.  If the credit score is positive, its watchful existence remains hidden in the shadows, usually unbeknownst to the consumer.  

    Since the consumer is denied access to services by this degradation of his/her personal credit, then we may inversely conclude that the corporation providing poor services and/or products should equally be denied access to the consumer's capital (i.e. money).  This is an equal relationship, a natural outcome of the exchange.  In real world term, it means that a 'corporate service score' should be used to lower the prices it can charge a consumer, to the point that horrible businesses will be naturally 'shut down' in its denial of consumer capital.  The benefit to the consumer is that, akin to a corporation's benefit from the consumer score, the consumer will sharply minimize their financial loss that would be incurred with a 'bad company' that ill-provides ill-products; they will avoid the loss of time, money, and wasted effort.

    Given the instantaneous nature of a consumer credit score in the actual world, the 'corporate service score' needs to be directly tied into the pricing structure of all goods and services--again, just like it currently exists in the 'consumer credit score'.   One might suggest that a key to this viable functioning is the banks and their ATM/ATH and/or credit cards, which increasingly lie at the heart of all commercial transactions in a modern economy.  The price that will be charged to a consumer at the market (i.e. store) will vary directly in proportion to  the corporate score; the lower the score, the lower the price the company can charge the consumer for a given product and/or service.  The consumer might obtain a bad product, but their loss will be reduced in direct portion to the bad quality of the product.   This mechanism will serve as a tremendous incentive to provide good services in the market, which is only now indirectly stimulated.

    All of the above, of course, means that the act of going to a consumer protection agency such as DACO (Puerto Rico) will have immediate repercussions to the company, which in turn will suggest that companies which previously lacked an incentive towards the 'ethical treatment of the consumer' will immediatley have a very strong desire to do so.  As in the consumer credit score, companies that are 'good companies' (akin to good creditholders) will be spared the tortous consequences.  The corporate score will, as its counterpart, lie hidden in the shadows, keeping a watchful eye over any wrongdoing that might ocurr.