ANALYSING

CONSUMER MARKETS
Marketing Management
Difference between Consumer and Buyer
• Everyone in this world is a consumer, from birth
to death. The moment a person is born, he or
she starts consuming products or services. In
fact, consumption starts even before birth-a
baby in a mother's womb is nourished by the
food the mother consumes.
• a consumer is a person who consumes or uses a
product or service.
• According to international Dictionary of
Management, "Consumes are purchases of
goods and services for immediate use and
consumption".
• Thus consumer is an ultimate user of a product.
• But buyer is a person who buys goods either
for resale or for use in production or for use
of somebody else.

• example, if a man buys saree and his wife

uses it, he is called a buyer.
Difference between Consumer and
Customer
• Customer is one who purchases a product or
services either for his own consumption or for
others. He is a person who regularly buys a
particular product or buys regularly from a
particular shop. For example, a mother buys
baby food regularly for her baby. She is the
customer and her baby is the consumer.
• There is another view about the difference between
consumer and customer. According to this, the term
consumer is used to represent situations where a
product can be directly consumed. The term
customer is used to deal with situations where the
products cannot be directly consumed. Thus we are
consumers of food and drugs but customers in case
of garments, durables, cars etc.
Meaning and Definition of Consumer
Buying Behaviour
• In the words of Great Poet Goethe, "Behaviour is a mirror
in which everyone displays his/her image“
• Like learning and loving, buying is a type of behaviour
that can be guided and modified by actions and
reactions. Consumer behaviour is a study of why people
buy.
• consumer behaviour is the study of how people buy,
what they buy, when they buy, and why they buy
products or services.
• In the words of Walters and paul, "Consumer
behavior is the process whereby individuals
decide what, when, where, how and from
whom to purchase goods and services".
Difference between Consumer Behaviour
and Buyer Behaviour
• Consumer behaviour involves the behaviour
of ultimate consumes (i.e., individual
consumers). But buyer behaviour involves
the behaviour of industrial customers
(organisational buyers). They make further
value addition to the product to sell it to
ultimate or final consumer or end users.