What the customer buys
Marcel JB Tardif, MBA
CEO - PerformInfo Inc. Auteur, Conférencier, Coach de dirigeants 26 553 abonnés + 3 900 post 560 articles
Peter F. Drucker[1] said: “Nobody buys a thing. He buys the satisfaction and utility he derives from that thing”. Advertisers have long been aware that product material attributes carry less weight in the average buyer's decision than is generally expected. He wants to satisfy his needs and expectations for well-being, even if this requires him to do so through a material good or service. It is, therefore, above all, social values of increased comfort that the customer buys, and not primarily the economic value of use or exchange. This justifies the company's implicit mission of creating the customer and responding to the customer's expected values of being. Of course, the transaction implies a financial compensation value for the company. But the end of the acquisition must not be confused with the means of the offer. The transaction gives rise to the creation of the customer because the latter's social expectation values will have been satisfied by the offering product, which will generate an economic utility value for him. In this way, the company, as a social institution, but with an economic response through its activity, will have responded to the customer's need for better-being values through the value of the goods and services it offers.
What the customer buys is his social comfort, through the economic utility of the goods and services he has requested. We can therefore affirm that the customer is the author of the transaction because he alone decides to conclude it. And so, without much exaggeration, we can conclude that the customer creates himself since he is the decision-maker and the executor of the transaction to purchase goods and services. He is the bearer of the social values that define him as an economic agent in the consumer market. And it is he alone who ensures the transfer of the financial consideration involved in acquiring the goods and services he has decided to purchase. In short, the customer is the market, and the company is a supplier to said market, which the customer's demand generates. Everything flows to and from the customer alone, who is the alpha (through demand) and omega (through acquisition) of the market implied by the transaction that creates it, in the consumption of goods and services useful to his comfort.
As in communication, it's the receiver who creates it. In consumption, it's the buyer who creates it. The company, as a factor external to the market, must act in the customer's interest, if it wants the latter to agree to do business with it. In these terms, the market is created by the customer. As a result, the company's mission is not confirmed by its offer, but by the customer's acquisition of the goods and services that this implies. However, the typical company is wrong to think that it is indispensable to the customer, by offering him its goods and services. In so doing, it forgets that the customer may prefer a market rival, just as he may refrain from consuming. The transaction is made by the customer, who decides alone. If the company wants to continue producing, it has no choice but to meet the customer's needs and expectations. In this sense, the company is perfectly dependent on the customer's decision to transact. But customers only buy what they want, i.e. a response to their needs and expectations for social well-being. So it's the customer's social values that drive the company's economic value, not the other way around. This is something that profit-mongers forget, as they would have us believe that the company is the indispensable transaction party in the marketplace when its very existence depends on the customer's unique choice[2] as the party that generates it.????
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[1] Drucker, P. F., (1964), Managing for Results, Harper & Row, p. 71.
[2] Drucker (1964) asserted that “the customer is the business”. He had already said (1954) that “the purpose (mission) of business is to create the customer”.