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> It is implied that when you pay, you are the customer, and when it's ad-supported you're the product instead. That's, frankly, a popular internet-age meme that is complete bullshit. For example, readers have paid some amount for many newspapers approximately since newspapers became a thing. Nevertheless, for most of that history, the main business of newspapers, from which the majority of their revenue comes -- even for the ones that have paid circulation -- is selling reader eyeballs to advertisers. With banks, depositors are customers of "we'll store your money safely and/or provide you interest on it" services that banks provide. They are also, by the same act, suppliers of the "we'll give you cash now in exchange for money in the future" that banks provide to borrowers. Paying for a good or service may make you a customer of that good or service, but it is not, and never has been, exclusive of you also being a supplier of another good or service that the same company is selling to someone else. Aside from confusing "suppliers of product" with "product", the ridiculously simplistic meme invents an exclusivity between being a customer and being a supplier which has never been a real feature of business. The two roles often coexist, now and for as long as economic interactions have existed. |