# customer (economic)

a person who gets a product or service by paying

- Computed level: L18 (depth in the emergence graph, not abstraction)
- Status: review  ·  Domain: common  ·  Arena: customer

## Emergence
**Emerges from:** [people](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-people.social), [products](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-products.goods), [services](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-services.economic), [pay](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-pay.economic), [get](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-get.acquisition)

**Through:** a person gets a product or service through an exchange involving payment

**Novel properties:**
- acquired possession through exchange
- economic role of recipient
- mutual obligation in transaction

## Examples
- In 2023, a customer paid $1,299 for an Apple iPhone 15 at a Manhattan store. *(economics)*
- A patient paid the clinic fee to receive a flu shot at Kaiser Permanente in 2022. *(services)*
- Someone bought a $99 Adobe Creative Cloud annual subscription in 2021. *(computing)*

## Used by
- [sale](https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-sale.commercial) (L19)

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*Canonical: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-customer.economic*  
*Structured data: https://emergencemachine.com/tools/lexicon/what-is-the-meaning-of-customer.economic.json*  
*Every definition provably resolves to space, time, energy and pattern.*