'Customers' Return To Business

Some on-the-spot research with Google n-gram (what a great business tool) reveals how the people of the world have changed the way they see themselves. It seems since 2008 people see themselves more as 'customers' than 'consumers', But this has not always been the case.

The language we use to describe ourselves and our habits is a good indication of our attitudes. The increase in the use of the word 'customer' in books from 1980 onwards; and the introduction of concepts such as 'customer service' and 'customer relationship management' in our business lexicon is a precursor to a larger shift. That of customer experience and the emergence of Brands.

Makes sense doesn't it - after-all who wants to be a consumer? We would all prefer to be 'Customers'. By definition a 'Consumer' is a user, a commodity, whereas a 'Customer' is something of value, an individual of status and power.

The top graph comes from Google's n-gram view which counts the frequency of words in books (published in English) over the past 200-or-so years. The data from the n-gram viewer can tell us relatively how important society thinks certain concepts are over time (and to each other).

The graph shows that the the concept of the consumer really took off in the turn of the last century. However, it wasn't until the 1930s that the idea of the 'consumer' as reflected in books became relatively more important than the idea of the customer.

1994 was the crossover point - when people started thinking of themselves more as 'customers' than 'consumers'. 

The second graph (below) shows the relative prevalence of the two terms in news media as measured by Google Trends. This data set shows the the idea of customer has overhauled that of the consumer in news media in Australia. (Once again, consumer is in blue and customer in red).


In this case, the idea of the 'customer' didn't overtake in relative terms that of the 'consumer' until 2009, but the switch has happened.

When we examine the results from different countries some interesting trends are evident:

• The UK, India and China have always held customers in higher regard.
• Australia emulates the US.
• New Zealand slower to respond, (possibly less influenced by US culture and greater market independence), however still moving towards a 'customer' attitude.

Inspiration for article: From an original article by Azeem A- Founder at PeerIndex