Page 62 - The Big Book of Business Quotations: Over 1,400 of the Smartest Things Ever Said about Making Money - PDFDrive.com

Customers

The customer is the engine of any economic system, the raison d’être of any
business. As such, the customer is perhaps the most complex factor for business
owners, economists, policymakers, and manufacturers—indeed, for all other
participants in an economy—to thoroughly understand. What are customers’
needs? What are their emotional states? How can they be reached most
effectively with come-ons?

At the same time, the customer rules. Economists, for example, seek to gauge
“consumer sentiment”—a person’s attitude about her financial health, the state
of the economy, and her outlook toward the economic future. “Consumer debt”
is tracked persistently. So, too, are the costs of their purchases—the “consumer
price index.” Never forget, the customer is always king.

We demand that big business give people a square deal; in return we must insist
that when anyone engaged in big business honestly endeavors to do right, he
shall himself be given a square deal.

—Theodore Roosevelt, US president (from his letter to Sir Edward Gray, November 15, 1913)

Customers today want the very most and the very best for the very least amount