Both Customer and consumer are people who buy products and merchandise. They are people who are always in the look out of good deals on any products and orders to save their money and make economy better in return.
Even though they look to be similar, they have their own share of differences.
A Customer
The word customer has been derived from the word custom, which means habit. Customers are people who keep purchasing from the same store and they keep coming back to the same place over and over again.
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This build a good relationship with the owner of the store and he sees to it that the customer is happy in order to keep up the business and this makes the customer feel important, so that he comes to the same store again, without fail. This in turn will lead to more business. And this is how the saying evolved “The Customer is always right.”
Customers could be individual, organizations or any other sellers. Customers take the decisions of buying. Customers buy products that they may not use personally, they buy either to resell or for those who are in need for the product. There are two kinds of customers, the internal and external.
Internal customers are customers who work in the organization, and external customers are customers in groups, business people or individuals who are outside the organization.
A Consumer
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A consumer is a broad term used for the individuals that use the services and products in the economy. Consumers are people who consume the services or products that they have bought.
While buying a product, they use all the information that they have received to decide on which product to buy. Consumers have goals and purpose while buying a product. Consumers pertain to a family
or individual. Consumers play a role in raising the demand of a product in the economy. According to the limited budget, consumers try to attain maximum utility.
A simple example illustrates the difference between the consumer and customer. A housewife buys household items for the house. Here the housewife makes the decision on which products to purchase and therefore she is the customer. Whereas, her family uses up the products that she has bought directly or indirectly. They are the consumers.
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In short, both consumers and customers are people who buy goods and merchandise. Both the consumers and customers are very important in maintaining a good balance and upbringing of the profit of the company.
Even though their functions and process are different, the thoughts of both are almost similar. Hence, a detail look will tell that, there is as such not much of difference between a consumer and customer, just minute differences, yet both play a vital role in the open market for all products that is being launched.