Jeff Jarvis with another great example of a customer remix:
“The ultimate consumers are the ones who design your products for you — so you know they will like it and buy it. In this new world, consumers will also market for you and handle customer service for you but the ultimate is when they go to the effort to tell you exactly what they want in the hopes you will give it to them, if you’re listening.”
Yes.
De rigeur, Doc jumps into the fray in the comments with his thoughts on the “c-word” (that’d be “consumers”):
“Why not ‘customer’ instead of ‘consumer?’
The problem for most manufacturers is that they still think of their customers as consumers, which Jerry Michalski defines as ‘gullets who live only to gulp products and crap cash.’
When customers had no choice but to behave as consumers, the difference between the two was academic. Now that customers can contribute real ideas to manufacturers, and not just cash for sales, the difference is much larger, and more important.”
Again, yes.
Just from a simple tacital level… product manufacturers often use the term:
CONSUMER: the end person who actually use the product. The manufacturer rarely gets money from this person. This is the guy who buys the iPod from Best Buy.
CUSTOMER: the person/group who the manufacturer actually sells to who then turns around and resells. This is Best Buy.
Not to say that the quote you use isn’t totally accurate, but hearing a manufacturer use “consumer” vs. “customer” doesn’t necessarily mean that they “just don’t get it”.