Who's the most important person

Do you know who the most important person is when it comes to understanding your consumers?

Do you know who The Buyer is? This is the person who physically purchases your product from you. If you are in the airline business this person might be the PA that books the tickets of the executive that flies between Joburg and London on a monthly basis.

Do you know who The User is? The User is the individual who gets to physically use and benefit from the product. For children's plasters it would be the kid who scraped her knee skateboarding and needs a bit of Mom's TLC afterwards.

Do you know who The Decision-maker is? Who makes the decision as to which brand is chosen and which is not? In hospitals - the person who decides which floor cleaner gets to be used may never set foot inside the building where the floors get scrubbed with that product, but they decide on which brand to support regardless.

Do you know who Pays for the product? Who's money gets used to pay for the product? Who's bank account has less money in it today than it did yesterday because a decision was made by somebody other than the bank account's owner, instructing another to go out and get something because so-and-so needed it.

Your product's buyer / user / decision-maker / payee is not necessarily the same person.

It's worth spending time understanding who each of them might be and how you might choose to engage with each of them in the future.