Consumer vs. Customer

You will notice that I will almost always use the word "consumers" and not the word "customers."  There are lots of other smart folk in the blogosphere whom you will read who do just the opposite.  Allow me to explain why "consumers" rule here at Fizz. 

Most recently, I have worked for several Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies.  I don't know about other manufacturing worlds, but in this one, the distinction between consumers and customers is quite clear. Customers buy the products you make from you and consumers buy the products from the customers and use the products.  Thus, retailers are your customers and the people who hopefully will love and embrace your products with passionate fervor are your consumers.  Although there are customer marketing folks at CPG companies and brand marketers partner with sales to meet customer needs, the primary focus of brand management is consumer marketing.  This is the lens through which I view my definitions.

Certainly you must understand and respect your customers and their needs.  However, if you do not create products that delight the consumer and you don't make consumers aware of your delightful products through clever marketing built on true insight into the hearts and minds of your consumers then you will not have the opportunity to meet your customer needs.  Because even if you paid a boatload of slotting and managed to get on every grocery shelf in America, if it doesn't turn, it will be red tagged and sitting in a clearance bin in a matter of weeks.

If consumers demand your product, customers will buy your product.  If your consumer and customer are one in the same it just makes your job a bit easier.  Even if you are in the B2B space and the ultimate consumers of your products have no say in the choice (I'm thinking things like office furniture or software that gets deployed across companies to thousands of users) - in this day and age, you cannot think you can continue to sell a product that doesn't please the end user.  Trust me - they'll blog about it, they'll post it on a compliant website, they'll find another job where they aren't forced to use stuff that just doesn't work. 

If you make consumers happy you make customers happy.  If you make customers happy then you are doing something right and your business should be making money.  Everybody wins.  But only if you make the consumer happy.  I'm all about making the consumer happy.  And that's why I blog about them.

Comments

[Fanciulla]

here's the thing.. ultimately each business and the product and the total sum of activities decide who are your ultimate consumer's and customer's. even then what would be the diffrentiating line between a consumer and a customer.

if i go along with what u say.. it boils down to the usual kotler definition that consumer is the one who ultimately uses my product completely and customer the one with bying motivation and so on... yet i fail to see how it completely gives me concept of consumer and customer and the line of difference between them....

[Maria Niles]

Thanks for your comment, Fanciulla.

You are correct that I don't offer a complete concept of consumer vs. customer. And, indeed, my views are based in part by a very Kotler informed type of marketing.

What I am hoping to offer is some insight as to why I don't use the term customer exclusively and choose to use the term consumer primarily when many, if not most, marketing bloggers do the opposite and prominent marketing bloggers are very vocal about opposing the use of the word consumer.

I think the two groups are not wholly distinct and separate and nor do they they need to be considered exclusively or one term dropped in favor of the other. But I do generally think that everyone is a consumer, and that is not an insult :) and that customers (those with the buying motivation as you describe) are a subset of consumers. So if you ignore non-customers (by my definition consumers since consumers = everyone) you're missing out on potential customers, opportunities to improve your product and service and, ultimately, business growth and success.