A customer is an individual or organization who purchases goods, or sometimes just browses and doesn't buy, whereas a consumer is anyone who uses the goods that have been purchased, or uses any products or services that have been generated within the economy. So, therefore if a man was to go to a shop and purchase a bar of chocolate, and his wife was the one to eat it, the man would be the customer (as he bought the product) and his wife would be the consumer (as she used the product). The sayings "the customer is always right" and "the customer is king" show the importance of customers to businesses. The word customer is a derivative of the word custom, which means habit. A customer, therefore, is somebody who makes a habit of shopping at a particular place for particular products. The fact that customer service departments exist in most stores also outlines the importance of customers to organizations. A consumer plays a vital role in the economic system because if consumers were not present then the economy would collapse. Gandhi viewed the customer as the most important person, and he classed them as something that an organization was reliant on, not the other way around. He actually stated, "He is not an interruption to our work, he is the purpose of it." The Consumer Protection Act 1986 in India clearly differentiates between customers and consumers. A consumer is classed as somebody who consumes a commodity or service, and the consumer is protected under the Act, whereas those purchasing anything for commercial reasons (the customer) are not.
