The Autonomation of Consumption Decisions

The digital transformation constitutes an incisive development which allows for radical new possibilities of transferring work to technical systems. This is especially true for the adoption of certain tasks by decision-making systems which are supposed to relieve humans physically but in particular cognitively in decision-making processes. Recent decision-making systems are able to execute tasks in decision- making processes without human intervention on an unprecedentedly high level. This can be observed in a multitude of contexts from navigation, surveillance and warfare to medicine and economy. Especially in economical decision-making, the implementation of decision-making systems in various forms has greatly increased in the last few years. This dissertation examines the phenomenon of decision autonomation in consumption decisions from the perspective of consumer protection, analyzes the development of the phenomenon and asks the question of how this phenomenon can be critically evaluated with regard to the principle of consumer sovereignty. The dissertation also proposes a model for the measurement of consumer sovereignty and develops solutions for a possible decline in consumer sovereignty with an increasing progression of decision autonomation of consumption decision.