‘Customer is the King’ because the he is the end objective of a business. A number of firms spend huge amount of their earned revenue in managing customers for repeat business and to identify new opportunities. Hence, it becomes very important to monitor the relationship between a customer and business organization so that he can be satisfied which would in turn harness more profits. While a customer may buy a product or service not for his own usage, a consumer is the end user of the product. For e.g. a person who buys a Mac Donald burger to satiate his hunger is a consumer but if he buys to supply the burgers to a Children’s institution for a charity purpose, he is a customer. However, since producers have following rights, they do not, traditionally, honor customer relationships (Boatright 2003):
1. The right to make decisions regarding products and design offered for sale
2. The right to set the price for products, terms of sale, conditions for warranties
3. The right to make decisions about distribution for products and services
4. The right to promote products as per choice
Contrastingly, the only right which a customer has is though singular, yet powerful, which is the right to reject the offerings of the company. Most of the times, unless it is a monopoly market, they have a choice to switch from one brand to the other or to opt for a substitute. Hence, it can be rightly said that the market exchange relationship between consumer and business is defined in terms of ‘caveat emptor’ or ‘buyer beware’ (Smith 1995) by virtue of which consumers aim to protect themselves from false promises or unethical behavior of producers. Hence Consumer rights were born which acted as a deterrent to organizations to refrain from cheating customers.