I’ve always been a big reader, but the pandemic has given me even more time to indulge my passion. I recently devoured Conscious Capitalism, by John Mackey and Rajendra Sisodia.
It really struck a chord with me, particularly this paragraph calling on businesses to stop using the term consumer: “Businesses must think of their customers as human beings to be served, not as consumers to be sold to. In fact, the very word consumer objectifies people, suggesting that their only role is to consume.”
Like the saying goes, “A consumer is a statistic. A customer is a person.”
There aren’t a lot of alternatives, so on a practical level, I feel it’s a bit naïve to completely reject the term. For example, Business-to-Business-to-Consumer (B2B2C) organizations do need to differentiate between the types of customers they deal with. They sell their products or services through intermediaries (companies, agents, etc.) who are one type of customer. That intermediary’s customers are often called policyholders or consumers……… Read more
This article is posted at heartofthecustomer.com
