Although they can often be the same person, the 'customer' and the 'consumer' for products and services may be different. These two terms are often used interchangeably.

The customer is the person, or organisation, that pays for a service or product. The consumer is the person who uses the service. Their different needs might be complementary or, on occasions, might be competing.

Ultimately, meeting the needs of customers is the baseline by which you will be paid for providing a service. Meeting the needs of consumers over and above the needs of customers does not lead to extra income per unit of service, but may be important in differentiating yourself from the competition and attracting more people in.

For example, dispensing is a service for which pharmacies are paid a set fee. We can choose to also offer value-added services to the consumers of the dispensing service (the patients) such as prescription collection services or delivery services. But remember that the customer (the NHS) will not pay for anything more than the dispensing fee.

So providing this extra service can only be financially justified if we grow, or protect, sufficient dispensing volume to cover the costs of this value-added service.

In fact, while these activities might increase turnover, they will do so at the cost of margin and care should be taken to ensure that it is not done at the expense of net profit.

Obviously, understanding your customers is important because failure to meet their needs will result in failure to be paid. Meeting the needs of consumers is also important to any business and so it is vital to understand their needs, as well the relationship between consumers and customers. While consumers are not responsible for purchasing a service, they can greatly influence purchasers.

On the non-NHS side of a pharmacy business, the customer and consumer are often the same person. This includes sales of GSL and OTC medicines and health-related items, private services offered by the pharmacy and retail sales of non-healthcare products.

The NHS is the main customer for the vast majority of pharmacies, either through nationally agreed services (for example dispensing) or through commissioners for local services (for example needle exchange services). However, the consumer may be any one of a number of people.

Obviously patients are the consumers of the dispensing service and services such as medicine use reviews (MURs). Local doctors will also be consumers of MURs. Nursing homes are the consumers of NHS services targeted at them, while members of the public are consumers of health-promotion activities in pharmacies and focused sections of the general public will be consumers of particular services such as chlamydia testing and treatment services.