From consumer welfare to consumer autonomy: Rethinking Indonesian business law in the age of digital markets

The rapid growth of digital markets has created new forms of consumer harm that traditional legal frameworks struggle to address. Indonesian business law, rooted in the consumer welfare paradigm of neoclassical economics, continues to rely on price-based and efficiency-oriented metrics. These metrics are poorly suited to capture non-price harms arising from data extraction, algorithmic governance, and behavioural manipulation. This study examines the theoretical adequacy of the welfare-based approach and proposes consumer autonomy as a complementary normative benchmark that operates alongside, rather than in place of, consumer welfare. Using a normative doctrinal analysis supported by illustrative references to the European Union's Digital Markets Act and Digital Services Act, the study interprets and critically assesses key Indonesian statutes—including Law No. 5 of 1999 on Competition and Law No. 8 of 1999 on Consumer Protection and Law No. 27 of 2022 on Personal Data Protection—against an analytical framework of three autonomy dimensions, each with doctrinal indicators and evaluative criteria. The analysis reveals a structural misalignment between existing legal frameworks and digital market realities, particularly in their failure to address autonomy-related vulnerabilities, and distinguishes regulatory gaps, overlaps, normative conflicts, and coordination failures across the three regimes. The study argues that consumer autonomy—understood as informational self-determination, decisional integrity, and protection against structural manipulation—provides a necessary complementary normative foundation for digital market regulation and the basis for coordination between the relevant legal regimes. It further argues that the traditional separation between competition law and consumer protection law should give way to a coordinated, convergent approach that also integrates data protection law and is consistent with the emerging concepts of digital fairness and contestability. A principled doctrinal recalibration, rather than radical reform, is necessary to bring Indonesian business law into step with the digital economy while preserving its core commitments to fairness and competition. Because the study is doctrinal, these conclusions concern the coherence and reach of legal norms rather than the empirical magnitude of consumer harm.