Consumer harassment imposes itself in today's society as one of the greatest challenges for
Consumer Law. Considering the power of the cultural industry and its ability to influence
consumer behavior, identifying how this influence can be materialized by advertising and
eventually converted into a form of consumer harassment practiced in the pre-contractual
framework is the major objective of the study. Throughout a research based on the deductive
method and bibliographical survey, the study is divided into three parts. The first is devoted to
the investigation of the transformations and social processes that led to the strengthening of
the consumer society as it is conceived nowadays, with special emphasis on the role of
cultural industry and the multiple meanings of consumption, demonstrating that it became
much more than a way of satisfaction to achieve meaningful aspects of life. The second part,
in its turn, analyzes the impacts of these transformations in the light of the new moment of
Private Law, addressing and revisiting important concepts for Consumer Law, such as
vulnerability and hypervulnerability. At that moment, the study will focus on vulnerability as
a notion of multidisciplinary character and, in addition, on the concept of consumer,
proposing a re-reading of the traditional definition of this legal figure, considering its current
role and new possibilities which are offered as well - which, in a paradoxical way, result in
both greater freedom and greater exposure to abusive practices. In the final chapter, we will
discuss relevant conceptual and normative aspects of advertising, as well as consumer
harassment, seeking, in this second point, to find more defined contours for this phenomenon,
suggesting even a concept of its own. In this way, from the subsidies achieved in this and
previous chapters, it will finally be possible to reach a conclusion on the relationship between
cultural industry, advertising and consumer harassment, finding that the overlapping of its
persuasive function to the detriment of the informational can convert advertising into a
manipulation mechanism and consequently into an instrument of cultural industry in the
practice of consumer harassment within the pre-contractual scope.
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