Consumer in the context of Market segment

A service is an act or use for which a consumer, company, or government is willing to pay. Examples include work done by barbers, doctors, lawyers, mechanics, banks, insurance companies, and so on. Public services are those that society (nation state, fiscal union or region) as a whole pays for. Using resources, skill, ingenuity, and experience, service providers benefit service consumers. Services may be defined as intangible acts or performances whereby the service provider provides value to the customer.

A final good or consumer good is a final product ready for sale that is used by the consumer to satisfy current wants or needs, unlike an intermediate good, which is used to produce other goods. A microwave oven or a bicycle is a final good.

When used in measures of national income and output, the term "final goods" includes only new goods. For example, gross domestic product (GDP) excludes items counted in an earlier year to prevent double counting based on resale of items. In that context, the economic definition of goods also includes what are commonly known as services.

Commerce is the organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions that directly or indirectly contribute to the smooth, unhindered exchange of goods, services, and other things of value—predominantly through transactional processes—at the right time, place, quantity, quality and price through various channels among the original producers and the final consumers within local, regional, national or international economies. The diversity in the distribution of natural resources, differences of human needs and wants, and division of labour along with comparative advantage are the principal factors that give rise to commercial exchanges.

Commerce consists of trade and aids to trade (i.e. auxiliary commercial services) taking place along the entire supply chain. Trade is the exchange of goods (including raw materials, intermediate and finished goods) and services between buyers and sellers in return for an agreed-upon price at traditional (or online) marketplaces. It is categorized into domestic trade, including retail and wholesale as well as local, regional, inter-regional and international/foreign trade (encompassing import, export and entrepôt/re-export trades). The exchange of currencies (in foreign exchange markets), commodities (in commodity markets/exchanges) and securities and derivatives (in stock exchanges and financial markets) in specialized exchange markets, typically operating under the domain of finance and investment, also falls under the umbrella of trade. On the other hand, auxiliary commercial activities (aids to trade) which can facilitate trade include commercial intermediaries, banking, credit financing and related services, transportation, packaging, warehousing, communication, advertising and insurance. Their purpose is to remove hindrances related to direct personal contact, payments, savings, funding, separation of place and time, product protection and preservation, knowledge and risk.

In political philosophy, the means of production refers to the generally necessary assets and resources that enable a society to engage in production. While the exact resources encompassed in the term may vary, it is widely agreed to include the classical factors of production (land, labour, and capital) as well as the general infrastructure and capital goods necessary to reproduce stable levels of productivity. It can also be used as an abbreviation of the "means of production and distribution" which additionally includes the logistical distribution and delivery of products, generally through distributors; or as an abbreviation of the "means of production, distribution, and exchange" which further includes the exchange of distributed products, generally to consumers.

The concept of "Means of Production" is used by researchers in various fields of study — including politics, economics, and sociology — to discuss, broadly, the relationship between anything that can have productive use, its ownership, and the constituent social parts needed to produce it.

An economic system, or economic order, is a system of production, resource allocation and distribution of goods and services within an economy. It includes the combination of the various institutions, agencies, entities, decision-making processes, and patterns of consumption that comprise the economic structure of a given community.

An economic system is a type of social system. The mode of production is a related concept. All economic systems must confront and solve the four fundamental economic problems:

A filling station (also known as a gas station [US] or petrol station [UK/AU]) is a facility that sells fuel and engine lubricants for motor vehicles. It serves as a local fuel depot and retailer who receive fuel products from refineries (via regular tank truck resupplies), keep the fuels in (typically underground) storage tanks, and distribute individual product to motorist consumers at a daily varied price.

The most common fuels sold are motor fuels such as gasoline (a.k.a. petrol, often as multiple products according to different octane ratings) and diesel fuel, as well as liquified petroleum gas (LPG, i.e. autogas), compressed natural gas, compressed hydrogen, hydrogen compressed natural gas, liquid hydrogen, kerosene, alcohol fuels (like methanol, ethanol, butanol, and propanol), biofuels (like straight vegetable oil and biodiesel), or other types of alternative fuels. Fuel dispensers are used to pump fuel into the fuel tanks within vehicles, gauge the volume of fuel transferred to the vehicle, and calculate the financial cost the consumer must pay. Besides fuel pumps, another significant device found in filling stations and capable of refueling certain (compressed-air) vehicles is an air compressor. However, these are generally used to inflate car tires.

In economics, the secondary sector is the economic sector which comprises manufacturing, encompassing industries that produce a finished, usable product or are involved in construction.

This sector generally takes the output of the primary sector (i.e. raw materials like metals, wood) and creates finished goods suitable for sale to domestic businesses or consumers and for export (via distribution through the tertiary sector). Many of these industries consume large quantities of energy, require factories and use machinery; they are often classified as light or heavy based on such quantities. This also produces waste materials and waste heat that may cause environmental problems or pollution (see negative externalities). Examples include textile production, car manufacturing, and handicraft.

In marketing, a product is an object, or system, or service made available for consumer use as of the consumer demand; it is anything that can be offered to a domestic or an international market to satisfy the desire or need of a customer. In retailing, products are often referred to as merchandise, and in manufacturing, products are bought as raw materials and then sold as finished goods. A service is also regarded as a type of product.

In project management, products are the formal definition of the project deliverables that make up or contribute to delivering the objectives of the project.

A residential community is a community, usually a small town or city, that is composed mostly of residents, as opposed to commercial businesses and/or industrial facilities, all three of which are considered to be the three main types of occupants of the typical community.

Residential communities are typically communities that help support more commercial or industrial communities with consumers and workers. That phenomenon is probably because some people prefer not to live in an urban or industrial area, but rather a suburban or rural setting. For that reason, they are also called dormitory towns, bedroom communities, or commuter towns.

Overconsumption describes a situation where consumers overuse their available goods and services to where they cannot, or do not want to, replenish or reuse them. In microeconomics, this is the point where the marginal cost of a consumer is greater than their marginal utility. The term overconsumption is quite controversial and does not necessarily have a single unifying definition. When used to refer to natural resources to the point where the environment is negatively affected, it is synonymous with the term overexploitation. However, when used in the broader economic sense, overconsumption can refer to all types of goods and services, including artificial ones, e.g., "the overconsumption of alcohol can lead to alcohol poisoning." Overconsumption is driven by several factors of the current global economy, including forces like consumerism, planned obsolescence, economic materialism, and other unsustainable business models, and can be contrasted with sustainable consumption.

Defining the amount of a natural resource required to be consumed for it to count as "overconsumption" is challenging because defining a sustainable capacity of the system requires accounting for many variables. A system's total capacity occurs at regional and worldwide levels, which means that specific regions may have higher consumption levels of certain resources than others due to greater resources without overconsuming a resource. A long-term pattern of overconsumption in any region or ecological system can cause a reduction in natural resources, often resulting in environmental degradation. However, this is only when applying the word to environmental impacts. When used in an economic sense, this point is defined as when the marginal cost of a consumer is equal to their marginal utility. Gossen's law of diminishing utility states that at this point, the consumer realizes the cost of consuming/purchasing another item/good is not worth the amount of utility (also known as happiness or satisfaction from the good) they had received, and therefore is not conducive to the consumer's wellbeing.

Light industry are industries that usually are less capital-intensive than heavy industries and are more consumer-oriented than business-oriented, as they typically produce smaller consumer goods. Most light industry products are produced for end users rather than as intermediates for use by other industries. Light industry facilities typically have a smaller environmental impact than those associated with heavy industry. For that reason, zoning laws are more likely to permit light industry near residential areas.

One definition states that light industry is a "manufacturing activity that uses moderate amounts of partially processed materials to produce items of relatively high value per unit weight".

Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholesaler, and then sells in smaller quantities to consumers for a profit. Retailers are the final link in the supply chain from producers to consumers.

Retail markets and shops have a long history, dating back to antiquity. Some of the earliest retailers were itinerant peddlers. Over the centuries, retail shops were transformed from little more than "rude booths" to the sophisticated shopping malls of the modern era. In the digital age, an increasing number of retailers are seeking to reach broader markets by selling through multiple channels, including both bricks and mortar and online retailing. Digital technologies are also affecting the way that consumers pay for goods and services. Retailing support services may also include the provision of credit, delivery services, advisory services, stylist services and a range of other supporting services. Retail workers are the employees of such stores.

Goods are items that are usually (but not always) tangible, such as pens or pears. Services are activities provided by other people, such as teachers or barbers. Taken together, it is the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services which underpins all economic activity and trade. According to economic theory, consumption of goods and services is assumed to provide utility (satisfaction) to the consumer or end-user, although businesses also consume goods and services in the course of producing their own.

Hoarding in economics refers to the concept of purchasing and storing a large amount of a particular product, creating scarcity of that product, and ultimately driving the price of that product up. Commonly hoarded products include assets such as money, gold and public securities, as well as vital goods such as fuel and medicine. Consumers are primarily hoarding resources so that they can maintain their current consumption rate in the event of a shortage (real or perceived). Hoarding resources can prevent or slow products or commodities from traveling through the economy. Subsequently, this may cause the product or commodity to become scarce, causing the value of the resource to rise.

A common intention of economic hoarding is to generate a profit by selling the product once the price has increased. Hence, economic speculators tend to hoard products that are inelastic in price so that when the price of the product does increase, the demand for that product is maintained. Unlike investing, hoarded goods are excluded from an economy's flow of money and purchasing goods for hoarding generally occurs in markets operating under a non-competitive structure. The practice of hoarding can have varied effects in the economy and is legal in most cases, however price controls and other regulatory laws are often enforced to prevent negative market implications. Under Islamic jurisprudence, intentional acts of economic hoarding are regarded as highly sinful and unlawful.

In mainstream economics, economic surplus, also known as total welfare or total social welfare or Marshallian surplus (after Alfred Marshall), is either of two related quantities:

• Consumer surplus, or consumers' surplus, is the monetary gain obtained by consumers because they are able to purchase a product for a price that is less than the highest price that they would be willing to pay.
• Producer surplus, or producers' surplus, is the amount that producers benefit by selling at a market price that is higher than the least that they would be willing to sell for; this is roughly equal to profit (since producers are not normally willing to sell at a loss and are normally indifferent to selling at a break-even price).

The sum of consumer and producer surplus is sometimes known as social surplus or total surplus; a decrease in that total from inefficiencies is called deadweight loss.

The target audience is the intended audience or readership of a publication, advertisement, or other message catered specifically to the previously intended audience. In marketing and advertising, the target audience is a particular group of consumer within the predetermined target market, identified as the targets or recipients for a particular advertisement or message.

Businesses that have a wide target market will focus on a specific target audience for certain messages to send, such as The Body Shop Mother's Day advertisements, which were advertising to children as well as spouses of women, rather than the whole market which would have included the women themselves. Another example is the USDA's food guide, which was intended to appeal to young people between the ages of 2 and 18.