WHO ARE THE END CONSUMERS OF YOUR PRODUCT:

End consumers are people who use or consume your product or service. End consumers may include non-profit organizations, a social group or club, people from New York, a government agency, a profit seeking business, and the list goes on and on. A customer, on the other hand, may be an end consumer or a business who sells to end consumers. To illustrate the difference between an end consumer and a customer lets look at some examples regarding the channels in which products flow from one customer to the next; until it reaches the end consumer.

A manufacturer, in many instances, will sell their products to wholesales or middleman, the wholesaler will then sell the products to retailers, and the retailers will sell the products to you and I - the end consumer. In this example, the manufacturer sells to its customer (the middleman) and not to the end consumer. The wholesaler sells the product to its customer (the retailer) and not to the end consumer. And the retailer sells the product to their customers who are the end consumers (You and I). Retailers and service providers, in most cases, sell directly to end consumers.

The channels in which products and services flow will vary demanding upon the business and its structure. The end consumer is the person, people, organization, or business that will use or consume the product or service and has no intention of selling it to someone else. All products and services will have end consumers.

In this section, we want you to focus only on the end consumers of your product or service and not on your customers. If, however, your customers and your end consumers are the same entity, then your ahead of the game.

Who will buy your product or service?  -  The End Consumer:

In this section, you will develop a customer profile to determine who will eventually buy your product or service. What age(s) and sex will your end consumer be?  Will potential end consumer's income, occupation, and/or education have an effect on whether they materialize into actual customers?  Where do your end consumers live, how often will they buy, and how can their life style be characterized? These are some of the questions you will answer in this section.

Markets already exist for almost every product available today and will exist for all products in the future. The question remains, however, how large and profitable are these markets and can they be easily reached. An overall market consists of many many segments having different needs, wants, interest, desires, buying attitudes, resources, locations, and buying practices. In order to pinpoint the end consumers of your product, you must analysis the Demographics, Psychographics, Behaviors, and Geographics of the overall market. These four components will be used to develop your End Consumer Profile. Your task is to determine which variables within each component pertain to your product.

HOW DO I DEVELOP AN END CONSUMER PROFILE?

BY LOOKING AT:

• Demographic Variables
• Psychographic Variables
• Behavior Variables
• Geographic Variables

The foregoing variables should provide you with enough information to develop an "End Consumer Profile".  That is - what are the Demographic, Psychographic, Behaviorist, and Geographic characteristics of your end consumer or target market?