Businesses offer gifts and prizes as incentives to attract consumers to make transactions. It is a common marketing practice to gain trading opportunities. However, if such incentives exceed a certain level of value, they may become the main consideration for consumers to make transactions with such businesses, instead of other factors like the quality or price of product or service. Under such circumstances, the provision of incentives will be contradictory to the spirit of performance competition.

 

In order to maintain market competition order, the Fair Trade Act amended and promulgated on Feb. 4, 2015, Article 23 was added: “No enterprise shall compete for trading opportunities by means of the improper offering of gifts or prizes. The competent authority shall enact the regulations with regard to the scope of gifts or prizes, the amount of improper offering and other related matters.” The FTC therefore enacted and promulgated the “Regulations Governing the Amount of Gifts and Prizes Offered by Businesses” accordingly on Mar. 19, 2015.