Customer, Consumer or Citizen

The theme of the recent Boehringer Ingelheim 12th Animal Wellbeing Expert Forum was around the question "Do consumers and citizens want the same thing?". There were some fascinating talks from various experts in their fields. We learnt that;

- Customers are those who buy products, Consumers eat the products, but Citizens have a view on product availability, provenance etc but may not be Customers or Consumers
- Experts rely on facts and balance risks versus benefits while Citizens use perceptions to make judgements and tend to have more emotional responses
- Buying practices do not correlate with concerns expressed around Farm Animal Welfare suggesting that other factors are at play - and most likely around costs - in other words citizens may not be able to afford to purchase products exactly as they would state their preferences to be
- There is a difference across species in willingness to pay for perceived high Farm Animal Welfare
- Food safety incidents suggest to the public that risk mitigation and regulation are out of control
- We are all marketeers when it comes to sending out strong positive messages about Farm Animal Wellbeing
- Benchmarks are most powerful when used to influence and inform debate