Consumer - What is a consumer?

A consumer is the final user of a purchased product or service.

Keep track of your customers and sales with SumUp Invoices.

Consumers can be either an individual or group of people who purchase or use goods and services solely for personal use, and not for manufacturing or resale. They are the end-users in the sales distribution chain.

What is the difference between a customer and a consumer?

Sometimes, consumers are not the people who actually purchased a product. For instance, parents often buy their children toys. In this case, the parent is the customer, and the child is the consumer.

Another example is if a dog owner purchases dog food or a dog toy, the person is the customer, and the dog is the consumer.

Put simply, the customer is the person who buys the product, and the consumer is the person who uses it. The terms are often used interchangeably because most of the time, the customer will be the consumer.

Examples of a consumer

A consumer is any person or group who is the final user of a product or service. Here are some examples:

A person who pays a hairdresser to cut and style their hair.

A company that buys a printer for company use. The customer is the company who purchased the printer, and the consumers are the employees using the printer. The company doesn’t intend to resell the printer.

A parent who buys their child new shoes. The parent is the customer, and the child is the consumer.

An individual purchasing a new TV for themselves. The individual is both the customer and the consumer.

A family purchasing a flight for a holiday. The whole family are the consumers.

Keep track of customers with invoicing software

With invoicing software, like SumUp Invoices, it’s easy to keep track of your customers. You can import or manually create a customer list to quickly send invoices, quotes, and credit notes to clients. Once they are saved in your contact list, you can select the customer when creating an invoice, and the software will automatically fill in their details.

For instance, if you have a recurring customer, you can save them to your contact list and create an invoice in under 1 minute each time they make a purchase.