Other forms: consumers
A consumer is anybody who buys and uses products. That is, everybody.
The word belongs to economics, marketing and law, where it has real force, since consumer rights and consumer protection exist precisely because a buyer is weaker than a company. Consumer confidence is a measured economic indicator. There is a mild criticism in it too, since describing citizens as consumers reduces them to their purchases, and writers use it that way deliberately. Biology has its own sense, where a consumer eats other organisms rather than making its own food.
1nounconsumerA person who buys and uses goods and services.
“The change will cost consumers around fifty pounds a year.”
Latin
cōnsūmō
Old French
consumer
Middle English
consumen
English
consume
English, today
consumer
Built from
From consume + -er. consume comes from Middle English consumen, from Old French consumer, from Latin cōnsūmō. From Middle English consumen, from Old French consumer, from Latin consumo, from con- + sūmō, from sub + emō, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European h₁em- (“to take, distribute”), possibly related to the root nem- (“to take or give one's due”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA