Consumer is a broad label for any individuals or households The household is "the basic residential unit in which economic production, consumption, inheritance, child rearing, and shelter are organized and carried out"; [the household] "may or may not be synonymous with family" that use goods and services In macroeconomics and accounting, a good is contrasted with a service. In this sense, a good is defined as a physical product, capable of being delivered to a purchaser and involves the transfer of ownership from seller to customer, say an apple, as opposed to an (intangible) service, say a haircut. A more general term that preserves the generated within the economy An economic system is the system of production, distribution and consumption of goods and services of an economy. Alternatively, it is the set of principles and techniques by which problems of economics are addressed, such as the economic problem of scarcity through allocation of finite productive resources. The economic system is composed of. The concept of a consumer occurs in different contexts, so that the usage and significance of the term may vary.
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In economics and marketing
Typically when business A business is a legally recognized organization designed to provide goods or services, or both, to consumers, businesses and governmental entities. Businesses are predominant in capitalist economies. Most businesses are privately owned. A business is typically formed to earn profit that will increase the wealth of its owners and grow the business people and economists talk of consumers they are talking about person as consumer, an aggregated commodity A commodity is a good for which there is demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market. Commodities are substances that come out of the earth and maintain roughly a universal price.It is fungible, i.e. equivalent no matter who produces it. Examples are petroleum, notebook paper, milk or copper. The price of item with little individuality As commonly used, an individual is a person or any specific object in a collection. In the 15th century and earlier, and also today within the fields of statistics and metaphysics, individual means "indivisible", typically describing any numerically singular thing, but sometimes meaning "a person." . From the seventeenth other than that expressed in the buy/not-buy decision. However there is a trend in marketing Marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business development. It is an integrated process through which companies build strong customer relationships and create value for their customers and for themselves to individualize the concept. Instead of generating broad demographic profiles A demographic or demographic profile is a term used in marketing and broadcasting, to describe a demographic grouping or a market segment. This typically involves age bands , social class bands (as the rich may want different products than middle and lower classes and may be willing to pay more) and gender (partially because different physical and psycho-graphic profiles In the field of marketing, demographics, opinion research, and social research in general, psychographic variables are any attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles. They are also called IAO variables . They can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioral variables (such as of market segments Market segmentation is a concept in economics and marketing. A market segment is a sub-set of a market made up of people or organizations sharing one or more characteristics that cause them to demand similar product and/or services based on qualities of those products such as price or function. A true market segment meets all of the following, marketers have started to engage in personalized marketing Personalized marketing is an extreme form of product differentiation. Whereas product differentiation tries to differentiate a product from competing ones, personalization tries to make a unique product offering for each customer, permission marketing Permission marketing is a term coined by Seth Godin used in marketing in general and e-marketing specifically. The undesirable opposite of permission marketing is interruption marketing. Marketers obtain permission before advancing to the next step in the purchasing process. For example, they ask permission to send email newsletters to prospective, and mass customization Mass customization, in marketing, manufacturing, call centres and management, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization.[1]
There is increasing backlash from the public over use of the label "consumer" rather than "customer", with many finding it offensive and derogatory.[2]
The consumer is the backbone of the American Retail Sales System (See picture). The consumer drives the economy by purchasing goods and services from vendors.
In law and politics
The law primarily uses the notion of "consumer" in relation to consumer protection Consumer protection laws are designed to ensure fair competition and the free flow of truthful information in the marketplace. The laws are designed to prevent businesses that engage in fraud or specified unfair practices from gaining an advantage over competitors and may provide additional protection for the weak and those unable to take care of laws, and the definition of consumer is often restricted to living persons (i.e. not corporations or businesses) and excludes commercial users.[3] A typical legal rationale for protecting the consumer is based on the notion of policing market failures and inefficiencies, such as inequalities of bargaining power between a consumer and a business.[4] As of all potential voters are also consumers, consumer protection takes on a clear political significance.
Concern over the interests of consumers has also spawned much activism, as well as incorporation of consumer education into school curricula.[citation needed] There are also various non-profit publications, such as Consumer Reports Consumer Reports is an American magazine published monthly by Consumers Union. It publishes reviews and comparisons of consumer products and services based on reporting and results from its in-house testing laboratory. It also publishes cleaning and general buying guides. It has approximately 7.3 million subscribers and an annual testing budget of and Choice Magazine Categories: Australian magazines | Monthly magazines | Consumer magazines , dedicated to assist in consumer education and decision making, and Consumer Direct Consumer Direct is a Government-funded call centre providing basic consumer advice in the United Kingdom. Information is also provided on their website in the UK.
In India, the Consumer Protection Act 1986 clearly differentiates a consumer as consuming a commodity or service either for his personal domestic use or to earn his livelihood. Only consumers are protected as per this act and any person, entity or organization purchasing a commodity for commercial reasons are exempted from any benefits of this act.[5] Furthermore, Indian case law has quite a few references on how to distinguish a consumer from a customer.[citation needed]
In intelligence studies
Within intelligence studies Intelligence refers to discrete or secret information with currency and relevance, and the abstraction, evaluation, and understanding of such information for its accuracy and value. Sometimes called "active data" or "active intelligence", intelligence typically regards the current plans, decisions, and actions of people, as, the concept of "consumer" refers to the political staff consuming and requesting intelligence.
References
- ^ Cross, Robert G. (1997). Revenue management: hard-core tactics for market domination. Broadway Books. pp. 66–71. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-553-06734-6.
- ^ http://mistinthegarden.com/2009/02/04/dont-call-me-a-consumer/
- ^ Krohn, Lauren (1995). Consumer protection and the law: a dictionary. ABC-CLIO. ISBN The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, now Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W.H. Smith and others in 1966 0-87436-749-2.
- ^ "An Institutional Analysis of Consumer Law". Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law. http://law.vanderbilt.edu/journals/journal/35-01/overby.htm. Retrieved 2007-01-29.
- ^ "Consumer vs Customer". Consumerdaddy.com. http://www.consumerdaddy.com/a-23-consumer-customer.htm. Retrieved 2010-03-10. "The consumer protection act 1986 of India, is a little more generous with the word 'Consumer'. According to this law, consumer is not only a person who uses the product for domestic personal use, but also one who uses the product to earn his daily livelyhood."
See also
| Wikibooks has a book on the topic of Category:Consumer |
- Alpha consumer Alpha Consumer is someone that plays a key role in connecting with the concept behind a product, then adopting that product, and finally validating it for the rest of society. The term was coined by entertainment economist Michael Wolf in 1999 and published in his book The Entertainment Economy
- Consumer debt Consumer debt is consumer credit which is outstanding. In macroeconomic terms, it is debt which is used to fund consumption rather than investment
- Consumer leverage ratio Consumer Leverage Ratio is a term popularized by William Jarvis and Dr Ian C MacMillan in a series of articles in the Harvard Business Review and refers to the ratio of total household debt, as reported by the Federal Reserve System to disposable personal income, as reported by the US Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis
- Consumer theory Consumer choice is a theory of microeconomics that relates preferences to consumer demand curves. The link between personal preferences, consumption, and the demand curve is one of the most complex relations in economics. Implicitly, economists assume that anything purchased will be consumed, unless the purchase is for a productive activity
- Consumerism Consumerism is a social and economic order that is based on the systematic creation and fostering of a desire to purchase goods or services in ever greater amounts. The term is often associated with criticisms of consumption starting with Thorstein Veblen or, more recently by a movement[citation needed] called Enoughism. Veblen's subject of
- Consumers' cooperative A consumers' cooperative is a cooperative business owned by its customers for their mutual benefit. It is a form of free enterprise that is oriented toward service rather than pecuniary profit. Consumers' cooperatives often take the form of retail outlets owned and operated by their consumers. The customers or consumers of the goods and/or
- ConsumerSearch ConsumerSearch is an English-language search engine for consumer product reviews, plus a database of reports on consumer products and services, published and updated only online. ConsumerSearch does not review products and services directly, nor does the site publish reviews from users. Rather, ConsumerSearch writers review the print and online
- Consumption Consumption is a common concept in economics, and gives rise to derived concepts such as consumer debt. Generally, consumption is defined by opposition to production. But the precise definition can vary because different schools of economists define production quite differently. According to some economists, only the final purchase of goods and
- Coolhunting Coolhunting is a term coined in the early 1990s referring to a new breed of marketing professionals, called coolhunters. It is their job to make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing cultural trends. The word derives from the aesthetic of "cool"
- Mass customization Mass customization, in marketing, manufacturing, call centres and management, is the use of flexible computer-aided manufacturing systems to produce custom output. Those systems combine the low unit costs of mass production processes with the flexibility of individual customization
- Mental health consumer A mental health consumer is a person who is under treatment for a psychiatric illness or disorder. The term was coined in an attempt to empower those with mental health issues, usually considered a marginalized segment of society. The term suggests that those individuals have a choice in their treatment and that without them there could not exist
- Consumer reporting agency A credit bureau , or credit reference agency (UK) is a company that collects information from various sources and provides consumer credit information on individual consumers for a variety of uses. It is an organization providing information on individuals borrowing and bill paying habits. This helps lenders assess credit worthiness, the ability
- Consumer protection Consumer protection laws are designed to ensure fair competition and the free flow of truthful information in the marketplace. The laws are designed to prevent businesses that engage in fraud or specified unfair practices from gaining an advantage over competitors and may provide additional protection for the weak and those unable to take care of
- Consumer organization Consumer organizations are advocacy groups that seek to protect people from corporate abuse. Unsafe products, predatory lending, false advertising, astroturfing and pollution are all examples of corporate abuse
- Consumer Direct Consumer Direct is a Government-funded call centre providing basic consumer advice in the United Kingdom. Information is also provided on their website
- National Consumer Agency The CSG presented its report, “Making Consumers Count”, to the then Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment , Micheál Martin, in April 2005. Among the report's key recommendations was the establishment of a new agency to champion consumer rights (NCA)
- Informed consumer The concept of the informed consumer is a fundamental one in the law of the European Union. Since the general Resolution of 1975, one of the primary objectives of the European Community, and then the European Union, has been the provision of information to consumers. The rationale is that market actors who are informed have a greater capacity to
- Consumer forum Consumer organizations are advocacy groups that seek to protect people from corporate abuse. Unsafe products, predatory lending, false advertising, astroturfing and pollution are all examples of corporate abuse
Categories: Economics terminology | Consumer theory Categories: Household behavior and family economics | Microeconomics | Economic theories | Marketing Categories: Business | Service industries | Business economics
Tue, 31 Aug 2010 17:02:40 GMT+00:00
Wall Street Journal (blog) Investors are taking some comfort in a new report on US consumer confidence that suggests that maybe just maybe the US economy isn't in ...
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for the service condition where all external cable entries are satisfactorily sealed to prevent insertion of a rigid steel rod of 2 5mm diameter in accordance with BS EN 60529 Hager Consumer Units accessories
