consumer
noun
Simple meaning
Someone who uses goods or services.
Pronunciation
Say it like this:
kuhnsoomerSay the bold part a little louder.
IPA pronunciation (US)
kənˈsumɚ
This word is pronounced essentially the same in American and British English, so one transcription covers both.
IPA (International Phonetic Alphabet) is a standard way of writing speech sounds.
Definition
Everyday modern meanings first, grouped by part of speech.
noun
economics
A person who uses goods or services
economics
Someone who trades money for goods or services as an individual.
by extension
The consumer base of a product, service or business.
One who, or that which, consumes.
Word at a Glance
- Difficulty
- A1 · Beginner
- Frequency
- Very Common
- Typical Use
- Everyday English
Word Aura™
How this word commonly comes across.
Aura for this meaning
This meaning: A person who uses goods or services
Used this way, consumer is a reasonably familiar word that usually carries little praise or criticism of its own. It turns up most in finance or economics contexts.
- Emotional tone
- Neutral
- Formality
- Neutral
- Intensity
- Not strongly marked
- How common
- Moderately common
- Connotation
- Matter-of-fact
- Usage feel
- Neutral and straightforward
Where it naturally appears
- Finance/economics
Word Aura describes common impressions, not a measurement. Tone changes with sentence, speaker, relationship and situation.
More ways to use consumer
- “This new system favours the consumer over the producer.”noun
- “Our consumers are upwardly mobile and middle-class.”noun
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Common Patterns and Combinations
How this word naturally appears with others.
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Word Family
Related forms, grouped by how they connect.
Inflected forms
Grammatical variations of the same word.
Eat up completely, as with great appetite.
Compound terms
Established multiword terms.
Marketing research that yields information about the motives and needs of different classes of consumers.
An index of the cost of all goods and services to a typical consumer.
A loan that establishes consumer credit that is granted for personal use.
Goods (as food or clothing) intended for direct use or consumption.
A finance company that makes loans to people who have trouble getting a bank loan.
Consumer goods that are not destroyed by use.
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Dictionary data from Wiktionary via the Free Dictionary API. Simple meanings, combinations and word intelligence are built from verified reference data, no AI is used to load this page.