
This afternoon, I spent a total of four hours listening to an Instagram live video with which the topic was centered around who should be responsible for the due diligence around a product before its usage. The Instagram live video had three speakers who were influencers. They were all females and two own a food blog while the last one is an actress. These people spoke extensively about what influencing means and who should be responsible for the due diligence.
The summary of the four minutes call was that the two agreed that the influencers should conduct due diligence before influencing a product and persuading people to use a product. The two believed that quality assurance should be done first by the influencers before advertising the products of the brand. The last speaker's (The actress) opinion was quite different from the rest as she insisted that the consumers of the products are liable to do due diligence on any product that the influencers advertised. She stressed that the job of the influencers is only to advertise the products for a brand and nothing else.
That brought up the question and the reason for the post title to know if the customers should be responsible for the due diligence of a product?
Let me start by saying that in developed countries, the government of such countries has organizations in place that samples all products which are to be consumed by the public at large. These bodies conduct quality assurance on all products and conduct numerous tests to check if the acceptability standard of these bodies is met. This here is for a country where things actually work and where these bodies have been adequately equipped to conduct this function.
Coming down to my country (Nigeria) we have a body that conducts the quality assurance on products and also tests the standard of the incoming product. The name of the body is NAFDAC and it is established and controlled by the federal government of Nigeria. The issue with this NAFDAC is that they are poorly equipped and its personnel are corrupt. This in turn leads to the passing of products that don't attain the PassMark grade of the established standards by NAFDAC.
While NAFDAC focuses on food items and drugs, they are other bodies such as SON (Standard Organisation of Nigeria) which checks the standard of non-consumable products, and the body is also controlled by the government. SON also share the same problem with NAFDAC and which in turn makes their rating unreliable most times.
Regardless of this fact, the customers who consume these products should not be responsible for conducting due diligence, and the rest of that job is with whoever is advertising on behalf of a brand. How can a customer who gets the products who their money and still conduct due diligence on the same product?
To me, it is stupid for customers to run due diligence on a product and it is too much of an ask. Other individuals who are attached to that brand should be in charge of this and be held responsible and accountable for any defects experienced by clients.

