Supply Chain

Are Your Products Bought or Sold?

May 21, 2011

Everyone, it seems, is spending a lot to get their message out: advertising, social media, collateral material, trade shows, websites, etc. It never stops.

The goal of all this activity is to connect with the marketplace so, at the moment of truth, our products are the ones that are ultimately chosen.

Something we might want to think about is whether people are merely acquiring what we produce? Or, are they being sold?

While this might sound like semantics, the difference is very real.

Everyone who buys your products is a buyer. But not every buyer is a customer.

We don't have relationships with buyers beyond the transaction itself.

Buyers do business with us because of a particular circumstance at a particular moment of time. Maybe it is the price; or availability; or blind luck that leads them to buy. Unfortunately, these same factors can easily change and they might not buy again.

Customers, on the other hand, are sold our products.

Customers have a relationship a connection- with us beyond simply the transaction. And if things change- as they inevitably will- it becomes easier to retain them.

May your products be sold, rather than just bought.

About the Author

Andrew R. Thomas Blog | Associate Professor of Marketing and International Business

Andrew R. Thomas, Ph.D., is associate professor of marketing and international business at the University of Akron; and, a member of the core faculty at the International School of Management in Paris, France.

He is a bestselling business author/editor, whose 23 books include, most recently, American Shale Energy and the Global Economy: Business and Geopolitical Implications of the Fracking Revolution, The Customer Trap: How to Avoid the Biggest Mistake in Business, Global Supply Chain Security, The Final Journey of the Saturn V, and Soft Landing: Airline Industry Strategy, Service and Safety.

His book The Distribution Trap was awarded the Berry-American Marketing Association Prize for the Best Marketing Book of 2010. Another work, Direct Marketing in Action, was a finalist for the same award in 2008.

Andrew is founding editor-in-chief of the Journal of Transportation Security and a regularly featured analyst for media outlets around the world.

He has traveled to and conducted business in 120 countries on all seven continents.