Customers are businesses that purchase your product and use it in making their own product which is subsequently sold to another customer in the supply chain or to the final consumer. Consumers are the people who buy your product and consume it, whether it is a food product, energy product or another type of product.
Whether you sell to customers in the supply chain or to the final consumers, you must understand the needs of each of these groups. Do You Know Your Customer provides you with a framework for understanding your customer. Understanding Consumers provides the same process for customers.
Money-Back Guarantees and the Value of Decision Time: An Empirical Analysis provides an empirical estimate of consumers' willingness to pay for return policies of different durations. Using data from California, we show significant willingness to pay for longer return periods and higher premiums for purchases through catalogues and the Internet. Guarantees are crucial elements of marketing strategies, and understanding their economics and use is important. It is especially important to design effective guarantee policies to effect adoption of new technologies and to introduce new products. These are two elements that will be associated with rural development.
Fit Risk: Secondhand Market versus Money-back Guarantee analyzes the effects of two post purchase mechanisms (money-back guarantees and secondhand markets) in reducing the fit risk consumers may face when they purchase products.
The Welfare Economics of a Money-back Guarantee in Retailing analyzes the welfare economics of money-back guarantees for products provided by monopolies facing heterogeneous consumers.
More information on customers and consumers is provided in the box at the right.