About Konsument

Konsument

Konsument is Austria's consumer test magazine, the monthly publication of the Verein für Konsumenteninformation, the VKI, Austria's non-profit consumer information association, based in Vienna. Published in German since 1961, it tests products, compares services and prices, and explains consumer rights, with a single defining rule: it carries no advertising at all, in order to guarantee absolute independence from the companies whose products it judges. Its print ISSN is 1024-1361, its website is konsument.at, and its editor-in-chief is Gerhard Früholz. It is Austria's counterpart to the great European test magazines, and for more than six decades it has been the most trusted printed voice available to Austrian shoppers.

The magazine cannot be understood apart from its publisher. The VKI is not a commercial publishing house that happens to run a test magazine. It is a consumer protection organisation, founded by Austria's social partners in 1961, which also runs a consumer advice centre, publishes guidebooks, brings model cases and collective actions in the courts, and reports annually to the Austrian parliament on the situation of consumers. Konsument is its public voice and its main source of earned income. Every test result therefore sits inside a wider system of advice, law and representation, and readers buy not only information for a purchase but the work of the organisation that stands behind that information.

The VKI and the Founding in 1961

The Verein für Konsumenteninformation was founded at the beginning of 1961 by the Austrian social partners, the partnership of employer and employee organisations that shaped much of post-war Austrian public life. At first the young association ran only an advice centre on Mariahilfer Strasse in Vienna's sixth district, Mariahilf, where the VKI is still based, at Mariahilfer Strasse 81. In the same year, on the initiative of a staff member, Fritz Koppe, who later became the association's managing director, the test magazine Konsument was published for the first time. Austria's consumer movement thus had a magazine in its founding year, before it had almost anything else.

The first issue appeared in August and September 1961, priced at three Schilling, and it was produced, as the magazine's own fiftieth-anniversary history recalls, on an Olivetti typewriter and a small Rotaprint machine. Its first test was of Frankfurter Würstel, the frankfurter sausages that are a staple of Austrian life. The choice was programmatic. Konsument would test the ordinary goods of ordinary households, name the makers, publish the results and let readers spend their money, in the founding motto's phrase, with knowledge as power. By 1962, without any advertising expenditure, the magazine already had 10,000 subscribers. In 1963 it grew to 32 pages, and a year's subscription of six issues cost 25 Schilling.

The Early Years and the Battle Over Comparative Testing

The magazine's first decade was spent fighting for the legal right to do its job at all. In 1964 it stood in a legal grey zone: did comparative product tests break the then strict ban on comparative advertising, and was it even permissible to name companies? Court proceedings decided in favour of consumer protection, in what the magazine's history calls a direction-setting judgement, and the way was free to examine products and services for their value to consumers and to publish the findings, naming names. Individual traders who disliked their results also took the magazine to court, including a fuel dealer who challenged the handling of an unfavourable finding rather than the finding itself, and the judgements went in Konsument's favour. Modern European consumer testing rests on that legal foundation, and in Austria Konsument helped to build it.

The subjects of the 1960s were the subjects of a country equipping itself for modern life. Television sets, then one of the largest purchases an Austrian household made, were a main theme of the first ten years. Growing motorisation brought a long test series on car repair workshops, which criticised large price differences and unnecessary repairs. Food testing began at once and never stopped: a 1970 apple test found that 90 percent of all apples tested were falsely declared. In 1966 the magazine moved to ten issues a year and its circulation rose to 25,000 copies. In 1971, after long series of cigarette tests, tar and nicotine content began to be printed on cigarette packs. In 1973 a repeat test of frankfurters, the magazine's first subject, found 62.5 percent of the Vienna samples adulterated or spoiled. The first issue with a colour cover appeared in 1974.

Expansion in the 1970s and 1980s

Two changes in the 1970s set the magazine's modern shape. In 1974 the VKI joined the European Testing Group, today International Consumer Research and Testing, the ICRT, the association of consumer organisations that carries out joint tests to save time and money, a cooperation that still structures much of Konsument's testing of internationally traded goods. And in 1976 Konsument became a monthly magazine, the rhythm it has kept ever since. From its founding it had denounced aggressive sales methods and questionable clauses in business terms and conditions; from 1979 the entry into force of Austria's Consumer Protection Act gave consumers new rights for the magazine to explain and defend. A central test theme of the decade was safety defects in children's products, an early sign of the protective role that would become one of its hallmarks.

In the 1980s the agenda widened to the environment. Readers worried increasingly about environmental protection, and the magazine reported on waste avoidance, recycling models, alternative forms of energy, pollutants and environmentally friendlier product alternatives. Food became a fixed part of the testing programme, often reaching the cover, from baby food and salads to mineral water, and sensory assessment, the structured tasting and smelling of products, became a recognised part of the overall judgement. A 1981 comparison of organically and conventionally grown tomatoes showed that better legal rules were needed to protect both consumers and organic farmers. Poor results for small welding transformers led to a mandatory safety test. A test series with miserable results was followed by a quality-class regulation for potatoes. In 1987, among the first computer tests, an Apple Macintosh was among the best, at a price of 65,700 Schilling. An internationally noted washing detergent test, lasting almost a year and costing three million Schilling, exposed environmental offenders; detergents became more environmentally compatible afterwards, and detergent tests became routine.

Finance, Health and New Fields in the 1990s

In the 1990s testing expanded into financial services: insurance brokers, investment advisers, current accounts and investment funds joined washing machines and sausages in the test programme. Alongside reports on pyramid schemes and the charges on foreign transfers, Konsument warned urgently as early as 1998 against the incalculable risks of foreign-currency loans, a warning that many Austrian borrowers would have cause to remember in the following decade. Car crash test scenarios, in cooperation with Euro NCAP, helped to make small cars safer, and those standards later became European Union law. The magazine's authority could provoke diplomatic attention: in 1991, after a test of sparkling wine and champagne in which some famous French brands performed badly, the French embassy intervened with a protest against the result.

The decade was also the magazine's commercial high point in print. In 1992, with its first Austria-wide advertising campaign, subscriptions reached their historic peak of 102,078. In 1993 awareness of the magazine stood at 88 percent, and a steam cleaner test that uncovered dangerous safety defects brought threats of lawsuits from manufacturers and, in the end, stricter safety rules. In 1994 bacterial contamination was found in some still and mild mineral waters and the health ministry issued a warning; the magazine was expanded to 48 pages. In 1996 Konsument went online at konsument.at, beginning the digital life that would eventually hold its entire archive.

Since 2000: Ethics Tests, Consumer Law and Campaigns

From 2000 Konsument claimed a world first. It was, by its own and the VKI's account, the first test organisation worldwide to introduce ethics tests, assessing working conditions, environmental protection measures and the openness of companies about themselves, corporate social responsibility, and linking those assessments to the established product tests. The VKI's own English-language information confirms that it was the first consumer organisation worldwide to start CSR testing and that, since 2000, it has informed readers not only about product attributes but about the production conditions of goods and services. The magazine also pioneered scrutiny in health, examining doctors, pharmacists and clinics, fields in which Austrian consumers had previously had almost no independent comparative information.

Reporting on consumer law grew steadily: current court judgements, collective actions and model proceedings fill more of the magazine, and affected consumers can join the VKI's collective actions through konsument.at and the legal department's site, verbraucherrecht.at. Individual tests continued to move markets and make news. A 2007 olive oil test, reporting pollutants and suspicion of manipulation, gave the magazine a kiosk sales record of more than 12,000 copies sold. A 2009 report on pumpkin seed oil found that in many products the seeds did not come from Styria, as the prized regional label implies, but from countries including China. Since 2020 the VKI has awarded a negative prize, the KONSUM-Ente, by reader vote, for food packaging tricks such as shrinkflation, packs that look fuller than they are and products containing far less of their headline ingredient than the packaging suggests. Its Greenwashing Check, run for more than five years, invites consumers to report misleading green claims; more than 250 reports have been examined, with legal steps where warranted, and the work continues in European actions against greenwashing in the energy sector.

How Konsument Tests

A Konsument test is a comparative investigation carried out to rules shared with its international partners. The VKI describes several distinct instruments. In comparative product tests, products are examined in the laboratory and in practical use, where amateurs and experts assess qualities such as handling, convenience, appearance, smell and taste; the different parameters are weighted according to their significance, and the result is a ranking on a five-step scale, graded on the Austrian school-mark pattern. Comparative service tests define important criteria in advance, since services, from insurance advice to repair quality, cannot be measured like objects. Market and price tests give a complete overview of a market where products are numerous and nearly identical, or where quality differences are negligible and price and equipment are what matter. Ethics and CSR testing adds production conditions to product attributes.

Verdicts are expressed in words every Austrian reader knows from school reports: very good, good, average, less satisfactory and not satisfactory. Test criteria are published on konsument.at, so that a manufacturer, or a reader, can see how a judgement was reached. International joint tests, coordinated through the ICRT with partners including Germany's Stiftung Warentest, share the heavy cost of laboratory work across countries under common rules and common embargo dates, so that no manufacturer gains an advantage from an early result in one country and none can suppress a bad result in another. In 2014 the VKI tested about 2,000 products in a year, at a test cost of about 360,000 euros for its own and cooperative tests. Companies that wish to advertise with a Konsument verdict must license the test seal, the Testplakette, for a fee, and the VKI takes legal action against misuse of its judgements in advertising.

Independence and the Advertising-Free Model

Konsument is, in the VKI's phrase, 100 percent free of advertisements, and the VKI itself notes that this gives the magazine a special position in the Austrian press landscape and matches the international standard of serious consumer magazines. The logic is absolute: a magazine that judges washing machines cannot take money from washing machine makers. Independence is also built into the publisher's finances. The VKI finances itself predominantly from its own earnings, around 72 percent in the association's published account, with the sale of publications, above all Konsument itself, as the main source of income; the remaining share comes from its members. Its membership has narrowed over time. The Republic of Austria has been an extraordinary member since 1975. The Chamber of Labour, the Arbeiterkammer, remains the ordinary member; the Economic Chamber and the Agricultural Chamber ended more than 52 years of membership in 2013, and the trade union federation ÖGB dissolved its membership at the end of 2016. Parliamentary debates over securing the VKI's federal funding show how politically visible that financing has become, and how much the magazine's subscription and sales income matters to the organisation's survival.

That model has a cost for readers and a benefit. The magazine has never been cheap, because readers, not advertisers, pay for the laboratories. Its single-issue price stood at five euros from 2015, with an annual print subscription at 52 euros, and a voluntary supporter subscription was introduced at 100 euros for readers who wish to express particular appreciation. The benefit is trust. An Austrian reader who sees a Konsument verdict on a shelf knows that no advertising relationship stands behind it, and manufacturers know that a bad verdict cannot be softened by a media budget. Few Austrian publications can make that claim in so pure a form.

Frequency, Circulation and Readership

Konsument appears monthly, as it has since 1976, and is sold by subscription and at retail, traditionally reaching newsagents on the last Thursday of the month. Its best documented modern figures are for 2014 and 2015, and they are given here with their dates rather than as current numbers. In 2014 the magazine's core edition was put at 75,000 copies a month. The VKI's activity report records about 52,000 to 53,000 print subscribers at the end of 2014, more than 9,000 online subscribers by 2015, about 55,000 single copies sold across the year 2014 in total retail sales, and about 300,000 visits a month to konsument.at. Set against the historic peak of 102,078 subscribers in 1992, those figures show the same long pressure from the internet that every print magazine faces, while leaving Konsument with a subscriber base that most Austrian specialist magazines would envy.

The audience is the Austrian household in its capacity as buyer, tenant, patient, saver and traveller. Readership research in the magazine's own surveys draws thousands of subscriber responses a year, and the editorial office uses them to choose future subjects, a feedback loop that keeps the test programme close to the purchases readers actually face: food and drink, cosmetics and household goods, consumer electronics and appliances, cars and mobility, money, insurance and telecommunications, health, housing and travel. Editor-in-chief Gerhard Früholz has written publicly about exactly that relationship, explaining delivery, surveys and the embargo system for international joint tests to readers in the magazine's own pages.

Digital Presence, Books and the Wider VKI

On konsument.at, all tests and reports from the magazine since 1999 can be retrieved online. Print subscribers receive free access to the full site; online-only access has been sold as its own subscription, at 25 euros a year in the published 2015 terms, with short-term access also offered. Alongside the paid test archive, the site carries free consumer news, product recalls, court judgements, collective action notices, short tests, model letters and legal information on subjects such as warranty, guarantee and tenancy law, and regularly updated overviews of savings products and interest rates. The Lebensmittel-Check, the food check run in cooperation with the responsible federal ministries, investigates misleading food packaging and labelling reported by consumers. The VKI's European Consumer Centre and its consumer law site extend the same system beyond the magazine's pages.

Publishing extends to books. The VKI publishes about ten guidebooks a year, and its programme comprised 61 titles in 2014, on consumer rights, health and medicine, technology and the internet, nutrition, money and insurance, and practical law from inheritance and tenancy to house purchase, sold through konsument.at, bookshops and tobacconists. Beyond publishing, the VKI advises consumers in person, by telephone and electronically, conducts market checks for the Austrian Ecolabel on behalf of the federal government, and, with the federal ministry responsible for consumer protection, prepares the annual report on the situation of consumers that is laid before parliament. Konsument is therefore best read as the visible tip of a permanent consumer institution, not as a standalone magazine business.

Audience and Significance in Austria

Konsument's significance in Austria is institutional as much as journalistic. For over sixty years it has taught Austrian consumers that products can be compared, that companies can be named, that small print can be challenged and that courts can be made to decide in the consumer's favour, lessons it had itself to fight for in the 1960s when comparative testing was of doubtful legality. Its tests have changed products and rules, from cigarette labelling and potato quality classes to detergent chemistry, car safety and the warnings that preceded Austria's foreign-currency loan problems. Its verdicts, licensed as seals on packaging and advertising, are part of the furniture of Austrian shopping.

In a small German-language market dominated by much larger German publications, Konsument also performs a national function. German test magazines test the German market; Konsument tests what is actually sold in Austria, at Austrian prices, under Austrian law, from Austrian insurers, banks, workshops and retailers, and it answers to an Austrian association that Austrian consumers can visit, call and join in a legal action. That is why, more than six decades after a three-Schilling magazine produced on a typewriter tested its first frankfurters, Konsument remains the reference point for independent consumer information in Austria, and why its advertising-free monthly verdicts still matter to households deciding how to spend, in its founding words, money laboriously saved.