Customer in the context of Shopping cart

A craft or trade is a pastime or an occupation that requires particular skills and knowledge of skilled work. In a historical sense, particularly the Middle Ages and earlier, the term is usually applied to people occupied in small scale production of goods, or their maintenance, for example by tinkers. The traditional term craftsman is nowadays often replaced by artisan and by craftsperson.

Historically, the more specialized crafts with high-value products tended to concentrate in urban centers and their practitioners formed guilds.

In product development, an end user (sometimes end-user) is a person who ultimately uses or is intended to ultimately use a product. The end user stands in contrast to users who support or maintain the product, such as sysops, system administrators, database administrators, information technology (IT) experts, software professionals, and computer technicians. End users typically do not possess the technical understanding or skill of the product designers, a fact easily overlooked and forgotten by designers: leading to features creating low customer satisfaction. In information technology, end users are not customers in the usual sense—they are typically employees of the customer. For example, if a large retail corporation buys a software package for its employees to use, even though the large retail corporation was the customer that purchased the software, the end users are the employees of the company, who will use the software at work.

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.

In marketing, positioning is the mental perception of a product or brand by customers. Brand and product positioning methods include product differentiation, advertising, market segmentation, and business models such as the marketing mix.

The origins of the concept of positioning concept are unclear. Scholars suggest that it may have emerged from the burgeoning advertising industry in the period following World War I. The concept was popularised by advertising executives Al Ries and Jack Trout and further developed by academics Schaefer and Kuehlwein, who extended the concept to include the meaning carried by a brand. Positioning is now a regular marketing activity and forms part of overarching marketing strategy theory.

A supply chain is a complex logistics system that consists of facilities that convert raw materials into finished products and distribute them to end consumers or end customers, while supply chain management deals with the flow of goods in distribution channels within the supply chain in the most efficient manner.

In sophisticated supply chain systems, used products may re-enter the supply chain at any point where residual value is recyclable. Supply chains link value chains. Suppliers in a supply chain are often ranked by "tier", with first-tier suppliers (also called "direct suppliers") supplying directly to the client, second-tier suppliers supplying to the first tier, and so on.

Trading companies are businesses working with different kinds of products which are sold for consumer, business, or government purposes. Trading companies buy a specialized range of products, maintain a stock or a shop, and deliver products to customers.

Different kinds of practical conditions make for many kinds of business. Usually two kinds of businesses are defined in trading.

A restaurant is a business that prepares and serves food and beverages to customers. Meals are generally served and eaten on the premises, but many restaurants also offer take-out and food delivery services. Restaurants vary greatly in appearance and offerings, featuring a wide variety of cuisines and service models — ranging from inexpensive fast-food restaurants and cafeterias to mid-priced family restaurants to high-priced luxury establishments.

Accounts receivable, abbreviated as AR or A/R, are legally enforceable claims for payment held by a business for goods supplied or services rendered that customers have ordered but not paid for. The accounts receivable process involves customer onboarding, invoicing, collections, deductions, exception management, and finally, cash posting after the payment is collected.

Accounts receivable are generally in the form of invoices raised by a business and delivered to the customer for payment within an agreed time frame. Accounts receivable is shown in a balance sheet as an asset. It is one of a series of accounting transactions dealing with the billing of a customer for goods and services that the customer has ordered. These may be distinguished from notes receivable, which are debts created through formal legal instruments called promissory notes.

Marketing is the act of acquiring, satisfying and retaining customers. It is one of the primary components of business management and commerce.

Marketing is usually conducted by the seller, typically a retailer or manufacturer. Products can be marketed to other businesses (B2B) or directly to consumers (B2C). Sometimes tasks are contracted to dedicated marketing firms, like a media, market research, or advertising agency. Sometimes, a trade association or government agency (such as the Agricultural Marketing Service) advertises on behalf of an entire industry or locality, often a specific type of food (e.g. Got Milk?), food from a specific area, or a city or region as a tourism destination.

A schedule, often called a rota or a roster, is a list of employees, and associated information e.g. location, department, working times, responsibilities for a given time period e.g. week, month or sports season.

A schedule is necessary for the day-to-day operation of many businesses e.g. retail store, manufacturing facility and some offices. The process of creating a schedule is called scheduling. An effective workplace schedule balances the needs of stakeholders such as management, employees and customers.

A trade show, also known as trade fair, trade exhibition, or trade exposition, is an exhibition organized so that companies in a specific industry can showcase and demonstrate their latest products and services, meet with industry partners and customers, study activities of competitors, and examine recent market trends and opportunities.

In contrast to consumer shows, only some trade shows are open to the public, while others can only be attended by company representatives (members of the trade, e.g. professionals) and members of the press, therefore trade shows are classified as either "public" or "trade only". A few shows are hybrids of the two; one example is the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is trade only for its first three days and open to the general public on its final two days. They are held on a continuing basis in virtually all markets and normally attract companies from around the globe. For example, in the U.S., there are currently over 10,000 trade shows held every year, and several online directories have been established to help organizers, attendees, and marketers identify appropriate events.

Lean manufacturing is an American invented method of manufacturing goods aimed primarily at improving efficiency within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and customers. Its earliest applications can be traced back to German manufacturing principles, first implemented during the Industrial Revolution in agricultural production and small factories. However, the term "Lean" was not used to describe these and other manufacturing efficiency methods and philosophies until the 1980s.

Before WWII, Dr. William Edwards Deming began to formalize the first true "Lean" philosophy for modern manufacturing while working for the US Bureau of Statistics. Later, Deming invented the first "Lean" manufacturing method and management philosophy, known as Total Quality Management, which continues to be used as the foundational teachings of Lean today. From there, the Just-in-time manufacturing (JIT manufacturing) process grew, first in Japan and then around the world. Just-in-time manufacturing tries to match production to demand by only supplying goods that have been ordered and focuses on efficiency, productivity (with a commitment to continuous improvement), and reduction of "wastes" for the producer and supplier of goods. Lean manufacturing adopts the just-in-time approach and additionally focuses on reducing cycle, flow, and throughput times by further eliminating activities that do not add any value for the customer. Lean manufacturing also involves people who work outside of the manufacturing process, such as in marketing and customer service.

Sales promotion is one of the elements of the promotional mix. The primary elements in the promotional mix are advertising, personal selling, direct marketing and publicity/public relations. Sales promotion uses both media and non-media marketing communications for a predetermined, limited time to increase consumer demand, stimulate market demand or improve product availability. Examples include contests, coupons, freebies, loss leaders, point of purchase displays, premiums, prizes, product samples, and rebates.

Sales promotions can be directed at either the customer, sales staff, or distribution channel members (such as retailers). Sales promotions targeted at the consumer are called consumer sales promotions. Sales promotions targeted at retailers and wholesale are called trade sales promotions.

Direct marketing is a form of communicating an offer, where organizations communicate directly to a pre-selected customer and supply a method for a direct response. Among practitioners, it is also known as direct response marketing. In contrast to direct marketing, advertising is more of a mass-message nature.Response channels include toll-free telephone numbers, reply cards, reply forms to be sent in an envelope, websites and email addresses.

The prevalence of direct marketing and the unwelcome nature of some communications has led to regulations and laws such as the CAN-SPAM Act, requiring that consumers in the United States be allowed to opt out.

A nightclub or dance club is a club that is open at night, usually for drinking, dancing and other entertainment. Nightclubs often have a bar and discotheque (usually simply known as disco) with a dance floor, laser lighting displays, and a stage for live music or a disc jockey (DJ) who mixes recorded music. Nightclubs tend to be smaller than live music venues like theatres and stadiums, with few or no seats for customers.

Nightclubs generally restrict access to people in terms of age, attire, personal belongings, and behaviors. Nightclubs typically have dress codes to prohibit people wearing informal, indecent, offensive, gym, or gang-related attire from entering. Unlike other entertainment venues, nightclubs are more likely to use bouncers to screen prospective patrons for entry.

In marketing, market segmentation or customer segmentation is the process of dividing a consumer or business market into meaningful sub-groups of current or potential customers (or consumers) known as segments. Its purpose is to identify profitable and growing segments that a company can target with distinct marketing strategies.

In dividing or segmenting markets, researchers typically look for common characteristics such as shared needs, common interests, similar lifestyles, or even similar demographic profiles. The overall aim of segmentation is to identify high-yield segments – that is, those segments that are likely to be the most profitable or that have growth potential – so that these can be selected for special attention (i.e. become target markets). Many different ways to segment a market have been identified. Business-to-business (B2B) sellers might segment the market into different types of businesses or countries, while business-to-consumer (B2C) sellers might segment the market into demographic segments, such as lifestyle, behavior, or socioeconomic status.

A value chain is a progression of activities that a business or firm performs in order to deliver goods and services of value to an end customer. The concept comes from the field of business management and was first described by Michael Porter in his 1985 best-seller, Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance.

According to the OECD Secretary-General (Gurría 2012), the emergence of global value chains (GVCs) in the late 1990s provided a catalyst for accelerated change in the landscape of international investment and trade, with major, far-reaching consequences on governments as well as enterprises (Gurría 2012).