A Wren Says

I came across a resource (information at the bottom of this post) that provided 4 possible customer roles. With the way it’s laid out, it’s easy to think about how you might need to tailor or shift your marketing and services.

Role #1: The Seeker- Learns about and gets more information about the product

Role #2: User- Uses the product

Role #3: Payer- Pays for the product

Role #4: Buyer- Acquires the product

Now, these are roles that could be played by four different people, but that doesn’t have to be the case. One person could occupy all of these roles in phases. Let’s think about some different scenarios all ending in buying pencils.

Let’s think about a design business first. The designer (user) puts in a request for more sketching pencils. The intern (seeker) has been tasked with doing the research to find the best options available. The financial manager looks over the information and then releases the funds for the purchase. That managers assistant goes to the store to get the pencils. And then the designer (user) receives the pencils and starts sketching.

Now imagine a mom is shopping with her teenage son. As they walk through the aisles, he lets her know that he needs pencils for art class. He looks at the options and then puts a package in the shopping cart. She questions whether he really needs a set that costs $20, but then pays for them anyway. In this example, you could say that the teen was the seeker and the user, but that he and his mother shared roles of buyer, his mom was the payer.

When I go to the store to get pencils for myself, I am the seeker, the user, the payer, and the buyer.

I would say the goal of using these roles is not to necessarily clearly define people into each bucket. It is more about how they might help you tailor you message as people go about this journey.

This is the resource I used:

Sheth, J. N. & Sisodia, R. S. (2019). The four A’s of marketing. In Marketing Wisdom. K. Kompell. Ed. Springer.