Brewing Debate, User vs. Consumer

Joseph Jaffe's been involving himself in a semantic debate over the terminology User vs. Consumer, so I thought I'd quickly weigh in with my thoughts.

I think it's a little more simple than most people are trying to make it.

A USER is a person who uses your product or service. 

A CONSUMER is someone who consumes your brand.  For example, the consumer may be on different levels of the purchasing cycle, including pre-purchase.  A consumer is not necessarily a user or a customer.  They may just not be there, yet.  The consumer absorbs some aspect of your brand, whether it's the product itself, your brand messaging, their sister-in-law's experience, general word-of-mouth, overall impression of brand, what charities you are involved with, some accounting scandal they read about in the paper, etc.

The point is a consumer is not just a customer or a user, because it is also a potential customer, or a former customer you've already lost.  Only using the terms customer or user immediately eliminates your potential growth areas.

So, debate over?

Comments

[David Armano]

"Only using the terms customer or user immediately eliminates your potential growth areas."

Good thought. I know everyone wants to solve this with one catch all term—but I remain steadfast that the "language of business" requires flexibility when using these terms.

We are not talking to customers—we are talking to OURSELVES. When doctors or lawyers speak to eachother, they use a certain lingo with lots of terms most people would find puzzling. If we are talking to eachother—we need a choice of words and phrases to help describe our challenges in detail. Users, Customers, Consumers, People, Audience, Individuals, Viewers, Participants and all...

When we talk to people. It's a different story.

[Paul McEnany]

David-

Totally agreed with your points, but I don't think people are looking for descriptions of certain segments. Unless I'm taking it wrong, they (the Royal they, so to speak) want terminology to apply to the entire market. As in, Is it Consumer-Generated Content, or User-Generated Content?

Maybe we should just throw out all the generalizations of the marketplace, and focus on the individuals in it.

Paul

[David Armano]

I agree with that. Less focus on symantics. I'm only making the case to not try to have a "catch-all" phrase.

It's easy to say—"let's just design/market for/to people". But sometimes we have to be more descriptive.

[karl long]

the trouble sometimes with discipline focused, symantec/political correctness you end up with a benign term that no-one cares about. Where would the CRM industry been if it hadn't aligned around the warm, fuzzy, and "profitable sounding term" customer relationship. It certainly wasn't on the strength of there often shit software. If we're a community who cares about marketing, lets act like it and use a kick ass term that can gain some equity in the marketplace. That being said, I don't like the term consumer :-) But I aquiess for the greater good, and have even tagged this "consumer-generated"

[paulmcenany]

So, what is it? Consumer-Generated? User-Generated? Citizen Jounalism? Civilian Journalism? Or, does it just not matter?

It probably really doesn't matter in the long run, and the best will probably shake itself out. I think I'll go with Citizen Journalism, mainly because it sounds cool.

(in case, you didn't catch it, that was sarcasm.)

[paulmcenany]

C'mon, Karl, Let's go with Citizen Journalism!

[Joseph Jaffe]

Nice thoughts all round. Got to synthesize all this thinking (I can smell my pea brain overheating)

[paulmcenany]

I think everyone's brains have now officially overheated.

[Daria Radota Rasmussen]

No matter what labels you will use customers, users, consumers, they are still and most of all people and in the end it is what matters. Somehow I find this discussion to be just a way to find another buzz word. And this is not where we should focus. Focus shouldn't be on giving names but on understanding.

[paulmcenany]

That's kind of how I felt when I first started hearing about all this, but the problem with that thinking is that it's all of our jobs to sell a new way to people who were very happy with the old way.

This is a discussion between the converted, to find the best way to describe our principles to the soon-to-be-converts. It might just be a semantic debate, but that means assigning the right meaning to the words we use. If "user" comes with too much negative connotation, then it makes it that much harder to sell the user as a pro-active part of a greater community. We're finding the best terminology to describe the empowered consumer.