ABSTRACT
Despite a rapidly digitizing economy, the vast majority of end customers continue to be people. This chapter discusses both retail customers (sometimes called consumers) and business customers. One customer may consider an issue as being of extreme and immediate concern, another customer may consider the same issue as being of moderate and non-urgent interest, and yet another customer may not even be aware of the issue. The customer attraction and retention levers are complex and vastly different across the staggering range of products and services that society partakes of. Seeing the increasing concern about emissions and climate change, it begins to prepare itself for a future where renewable energy and hydrogen fuels might be more palatable to its customers. Since the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the discomfort expressed by retail customers of well-known brands regarding labour practices in supply chains has visibly increased.
