We explain what a customer is and why it is so important for the economy. Also, some meanings about this term.
What is customer?
The concept of customer is used to refer to the persons or entities that do usufruct of resources or services that provides another.
The origin of this term dates back to ancient Rome, the client being that economically inferior individual, who put himself at the service of a higher ranking person in a relationship, which was not regulated and which gave, to the higher ranking, an important prestige Social.
This definition is the essence of the term, which nevertheless is dismembered and reinvented according to the area that uses it. There are many fields that take the term and apply it in its context, but always on the basis of being a person or organization who, voluntarily, receives something in exchange for something else that he delivers.
The marketing is one of the disciplines who uses the concept the most: understands it as the person who acquires a product, either to make usufruct of it, or to obtain a greater profit with it.
Organizations live on the basis of customers, since they are the ones who with each decision of consumption contribute to what will later be the gain of the company. Obviously, the categorizations made of the clients will differ greatly according to the type of company or product considered, but in all cases we can speak of satisfied or dissatisfied clients, according to the result they have had, that is, the level to which the company met their needs (known to have an impact on future purchases). Companies also analyze clients according to their psychological profile, their willingness to change and their traditions in consumption.
The advertising, for example, is a key link between businessman and the client, being the vehicle through which the idea and the values to be assigned to the products reach the senses of potential consumer. This conception of marketing is derived from the need that the microeconomics to establish the classes of consumers.
Much of the classical theory of business consider the terms of need, of the utility and satisfaction in consumption, so it was necessary to deepen these concepts. Also the economy determines those criteria of frequency and volume of shopping.
Two more meanings of the term client, which arise from this relationship between two entities that exchange something are:
- From the politics. A client is believed to be a person who receives some kind of favor from a party or Leader politician, and that he will return that favor through support or vote (hence the term “patronage”).
- From theright. A client is called that person who is in protection of another. The clearest example is that of the defense attorney, who must defend his client in litigation. The image of the lawyer uses the expression "my client" to refer to his client in the framework of an oral trial, for example, is well known.