Customer (pronounced kuhs-tuhm-ah)
(1) A
habitual patron, regular purchaser, returning client; one who has a custom of
buying from a particular business (obsolete in its technical sense).
(2) A
patron, a client; one who purchases or receives a product or service from a
business or merchant, or intends to do so.
(3) In
various slang forms (cool customer, tough customer, ugly customer, customer
from hell, dream customer etc), a person, especially one engaging in some sort
of interaction with others.
(4) Under
the Raj, a native official who exacted customs duties (historic use from
British colonial India).
Late
1300s: From the Middle English customere
& custommere (one who purchases
goods or supplies, one who customarily buys from the same tradesman or guild), from
custumer (customs official,
toll-gatherer), from the Anglo-French custumer,
from the Old French coustumier & costumier (from which modern French gained
coutumier (customary, custumal)),
from the Medieval Latin noun custumarius
(a toll-gatherer, tax-collector), a back-formation from the adjective custumarius (pertaining to custom or
customs) from custuma (custom, tax). The literal translation of the Medieval Latin
custumarius was “pertaining to a
custom or customs”, a contraction of the Latin consuetudinarius, from consuetudo
(habit, usage, practice, tradition). The
generalized sens of “a person with whom one has dealings” emerged in the 1540s
while that of “a person to deal with” (then as now usually with some defining
adjective: “tough customer”, difficult customer” et al) was in use by the 1580s. Derived terms are common including customer
account, customer base, customer care, customer experience, customer-oriented, customer
research, customer resistance, customer service, customer success, customer
support, direct-to-customer, customer layer, customer-to-customer, ugly
customer, tough customer, difficult customer et al. Customer is a noun; the noun plural is
customers.
William
Shakespeare (1564–1616) used the word sometimes to mean “prostitute” and in his
work was the clear implication that a buyer was as guilty as the seller, the law
both unjust a hypocritical, something which in the twentieth century would be rectified
in Swedish legislation.
Shakespeare: All's Well That Ends Well (circa 1602), Act 5, scene 3
LAFEW: This
woman’s an easy glove, my lord; she goes off and on at pleasure.
KING: This ring was mine. I gave it his first
wife.
DIANA: It might be yours or hers for aught I know.
KING (to
attendants) Take her away. I do not like
her now. To prison with her, and away
with him. Unless thou tell’st me where thou hadst this ring, Thou diest within
this hour.
DIANA: I’ll never tell you.
KING: Take her away.
DIANA: I’ll put in bail, my liege.
KING: I think thee now some common customer.
DIANA (to
Bertram): By Jove, if ever I knew man,
’twas you.
In
Sweden, the law was amended in a way of which Shakespeare might have approved, Chapter
6, Section 11 of the Swedish Penal Code making it an offence to pay for sex, the
act of “purchasing sexual services”
criminalized, the aim being to reduce the demand for prostitution. The law provides for fines or a maximum term
of imprisonment for one year, depending on the circumstances of the case. So selling sexual services is not unlawful in
Sweden but being a customer is, an inversion of the model for centuries applied
in the West. Individuals who engage in
prostitution are not criminalized under Swedish law, which is intended to
protect sex workers from legal penalties while targeting the customers, now
defined as those who “exploit them”. The Swedish model aims to reduce prostitution
by focusing on the demand side and providing support for those who wish to exit
prostitution and as a statement of public policy, the law reform reflected the
government’s view prostitution was a form of gender inequality and
exploitation. The effectiveness of the
measure has over the years been debated and the customer-focused model of
enforcement has not widely been emulated.
The
customer is always right
The much
quoted phrase (which in some areas of commerce is treated as a proverb): “the customer is always right” has its origins
in retail commerce and is used to encapsulate the value: “service staff should give high priority to customer satisfaction”. It is of course not always literally true, the
point being that even when patently wrong about something, it is the customer
who is paying for stuff so they should always be treated as if they are right. Money being the planet’s true lingua franca,
variations exist in many languages, the best known of which is the French le client n'a jamais tort (the customer
is never wrong), the slogan of Swiss hotelier César Ritz (1850-1918) whose name
lived on in the Hôtel Ritz in Paris, the Ritz and Carlton Hotels in London and
the Ritz-Carlton properties dotted around the world. While not always helpful for staff on the
shop floor, it’s an indispensible tool for those basing product manufacturing or
distribution decisions on aggregate demand.
To these bean counters, what is means is that if there is great demand
for red widgets and very little for yellow widgets, the solution is probably
not to commission an advertising campaign for yellow widgets but to increase production
of the red, while reducing or even ceasing runs of the yellow. The customer is “right” in what they want,
not in the sense of “right & wrong” but in the sense of their demand being
the way to work out what is the “right” thing to produce because it will sell.
Available at Gullwing Motor Cars: Your choice at US$129,500 apiece.
The notion
of “the customer is always right” manifests in the market for pre-modern
Ferraris (a pre-1974 introduction the accepted cut-off). While there nothing unusual about
differential demand in just about any market sector, dramatically is it
illustrated among pre-modern Ferraris with some models commanding prices in
multiples of others which may be rarer, faster, more credentialed or have a notionally
more inviting specification. That can
happen when two different models are of much the same age and in similar
condition but a recent listing by New York-based Gullwing Motor Cars juxtaposed
two listings which left no doubt where demand exists. The two were both from 1972: a 365 GTC/4 and
a Dino 246 GT.
Some reconditioning required: 1972 Ferrari 356 GTC/4
Some assembly required: 1972 Dino 246 GT
Aggregate demand: The highly regarded auction site Bring-a-Trailer (BAT, their origin being a clearing house for “projects” although most were less challenging than Gullwing’s Dino) publishes auction results (including “reserve not met” no-sales) and the outcomes demonstrate how much the market lusts for Dinos. BAT also has a lively comments section for each auction and more than once a thread had evolved to discuss the incongruity of the prices achieved by Dinos compared with the rarer Boxer 365 & 512 BB (1973-1984) which was when new much more expensive, much faster and, of course, a genuine twelve cylinder Ferrari. In such markets however, objective breakdowns of specifications and specific performance are not what decide outcomes: The customer is always right.
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