Customer and Consumer – Two Sides of the Business Coin
Marketing is all about knowing customers’ needs and responding to them. While the statement in itself might be an over-simplified version of the art that marketing is, there is a marked difference between a customer and a consumer. While anyone who purchases a product or service could be called a customer, a consumer is one who doesn’t resell the product or service but takes it up for his own consumption. In the world of marketing, both the customer and the consumer are inseparable parts of business and a business needs to keep both of them in good humor to be able to succeed in the long run.
Consumer Research and Customer Satisfaction: A business, during the conception of the product or service, has to take both the customers’ and the consumers’ requirements into consideration. To satisfy one at the expense of the other is not a workable proposition. While organizations do a lot of research about a product or service before rolling it out in the market, companies also have to make the product attractive for the customer so that the product reaches the end consumer who is being targeted. For instance, a product may be spectacular in its ability to address a set of needs in the market, but unless the product has a tangible value that appeals to the customer (in this case, the reseller or the retailer), the product may not see the light of the day at all.
Franchisee as the Customer: The customer here is also referred to as the Marketing Channel. The product has to go through the Marketing Channel to reach the customer. However, merely satisfying the marketing channel – the customer – while cutting down on consumer satisfaction, would be a futile attempt as well. If you can imagine the McDonald’s burger, you do not recall just the burger with its crisp crust and all the fillings that make a mouthful; you immediately recall the whole ambiance, the store layout, the yellow McDonald’s icon and its service counters abuzz with people being served in long queues. The marketing channel (the customer) here is the franchisee. If McDonald’s has everything right, from its logo to ambiance and service people but makes horrible burgers, the entire concept of Customer Satisfaction goes waste, as the consumer is completely ignored!
Retailer as the Customer: In the case of your favorite product from P&G, for instance, you would never be able to get the product off the shelves from Wal-Mart, if P&G had an issue with Wal-Mart or if Wal-Mart decided never to stack P&G’s products (an extremely unlikely scenario, though).
In both the cases, you are the consumer but the role of the customer for McDonald’s and P&G is inevitable and indispensable. Companies ignore either of the consumer and the customer at their own peril.
