what is the difference between a customer and a consumer?

Answer 1

nothing

Answer 2

A customer is someone who buys something. A Consumer is the end user of the product.

Example: A supermarket buys products from a wholesale distributor. The Supermarket is the distributor's customer. When you buy the products for your personal use, not only are you a customer, you're also a consumer.

This is why multi level marketing schemes fail... everyone under the originator of the pyramid is a customer, but unless someone actually uses up the product, it's doomed to fail.

Answer 3

The line of difference alienating customer from consumer is very very thin and can be seen by the discerning. The difference can best be explained by examples rather than by description of the difference itself. As a customer I go to a shop and buy sweets, which are consumed by children. The children are the consumers and I the customer. Similarly my contractor who buys building materials from a shop is a customer and I for whom the building is built is the consumer. Likewise so many examples can be said, but as I mentioned earlier the difference can best be explained by examples rather than explaining the difference.

Answer 4

They may have been looking for something specific to the interview, but, generally, a consumer is anyone that consumes product. A customer is someone who is buying something from you to consume. Customer is a sub-group of consumer.

Answer 5

Different authors have different opinions. They're both generally the same thing, though the usage of the word differs from situation to situation. For example, business buyers of products like heavy machinery or other industrial equipment don't "consume" them; so they're called customers. Similarly, you don't "consume" products like cell phones, watches etc so in this case you'd be a customer. Whereas products like softdrinks, food etc are actually consumed, so here both "consumer" and "customer" would be appropriate. It all depends on what context you're using the words. Hope this helps.

Answer 6

Customer is a person who buys goods or services from a shop or business.
Consumer is a person who consumes or uses a product.

Answer 7

From the point of view of English usage:
CUSTOMER: One who uses something by force of habit, or due to the custom prevailing in his society.
CONSUMER: One who consumes something for his (Or his family's) personal use.
From Marketing angle:

A Consumer can also be a Customer, when he goes to buy something from a shop or a company, for consuming it. [It may be FMCG, or Fast Moving Consumer Goods like Detergents, Breakfast cereals, Toothpastes, etc ,
or it may be Consumer Durables like TV, Car, Frig, etc.]
But if a Customer goes to a shop to buy something which he does not intend consuming, (May be, he wants to gift it to someone else), how can we call him a Consumer??

Answer 8

A retailer would call the person (end user) who buys their products/services either a customer or consumer, BUT, the distributer who sells the product to the retailer, he would refer to the retailer has his customer not his consumer.

I use it to help identify which purchaser I'm talking about. The people that buy from me retailers such as Walmart/Home Depot and I refer to them as my customers, and the people who buy from them, I refer to them as consumers.

Answer 9

To me it is simple:
The customer BUYS the product,
and the consumer USES the product.

You could be both, or just one. (:

Answer 10

Consumer means the market of a product/service. That is consumer of toothpastes, fast food restaurants.

Customer means the individual of a market of product/service. That is customer of colgate, macdonalds.

Answer 11

According to Dictionary.com:
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cus‧tom‧er  /ˈkʌstəmər/ –noun
1.a person who purchases goods or services from another; buyer; patron.
2.Informal. a person one has to deal with: a tough customer; a cool customer.
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con‧sum‧er  /kənˈsumər/ –noun
1.a person or thing that consumes.
2.Economics. a person or organization that uses a commodity or service.
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The obvious keywords here seperating a customer from a consumer is "purchases" and "uses". According to these definitions, a customer "purchases" goods and a consumer "uses" them.

From this analysis, you could assume that the customer is not always the primary consumer as is seen in gift giving. The customer purchases the gift, gives it to a friend, who then is the consumer. In this case, we would consider the customer more as a secondary consumer because their "use" of the item was not the primary designated use.

But they theoretically COULD be the same individual, using Thesaurus.com:
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Main Entry: customer
Part of Speech: noun
Definition: buyer
Synonyms: chump, client, clientele, consumer, easy make, float, front, habitué, head, live one, mark, patron, pigeon, prospect, purchaser, regular shopper, shopper, ******, walk-in
Antonyms: seller, vendor
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You can see that consumer is synonomous with customer when the definition of customer is "buyer".

What I take from this discussion is that technically all customers are consumers, but not all consumers are customers.