A customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a Good or a service, or a product, or an idea, obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange for money or some other valuable consideration. Etymologically, a client is someone merely inclined to do business, whereas a purchaser procures goods or services on occasion but a customer customarily or habitually engages in transactions. This distinction is merely historic. Today customers are generally categorized into two types:
A customer may or may not also be a consumer, but the two notions are distinct, even though the terms are commonly confused. A customer purchases goods; a consumer uses them. An ultimate customer may be a consumer as well, but just as equally may have purchased items for someone else to consume. An intermediate customer is not a consumer at all. The situation is somewhat complicated in that ultimate customers of so-called industrial goods and services (who are entities such as government bodies, manufacturers, and educational and medical institutions) either themselves use up the goods and services that they buy, or incorporate them into other finished products, and so are technically consumers, too. However, they are rarely called that, but are rather called industrial customers or business-to-business customers. Similarly, customers who buy services rather than goods are rarely called consumers.
A financial market is a market in which people trade financial securities, commodities, and other fungible items of value at low transaction costs and at prices that reflect supply and demand. Securities include stocks and bonds, and commodities include precious metals or agricultural products.
In economics, typically, the term market means the aggregate of possible buyers and sellers of a certain good or service and the transactions between them.
The term "market" is sometimes used for what are more strictly exchanges, organizations that facilitate the trade in financial securities, e.g., a stock exchange or commodity exchange. This may be a physical location (like the NYSE, BSE, NSE) or an electronic system (like NASDAQ). Much trading of stocks takes place on an exchange; still, corporate actions (merger, spinoff) are outside an exchange, while any two companies or people, for whatever reason, may agree to sell stock from the one to the other without using an exchange.
Trading of currencies and bonds is largely on a bilateral basis, although some bonds trade on a stock exchange, and people are building electronic systems for these as well, similar to stock exchanges.
Market is a 2003 film directed by Jay Prakash and starring Manisha Koirala. The film follows the story of Muskaan Bano (Manisha Koirala) from her life in Indian brothels after being sold there by her Arab husband to her attempts at revenge later in life. The film garnered a decent opening and was a surprise success of the year. It was declared Average at the box office.
In financial accounting, an asset is an economic resource. Anything tangible or intangible that can be owned or controlled to produce value and that is held to have positive economic value is considered an asset. Simply stated, assets represent value of ownership that can be converted into cash (although cash itself is also considered an asset).
The balance sheet of a firm records the monetary value of the assets owned by the firm. It is money and other valuables belonging to an individual or business. Two major asset classes are tangible assets and intangible assets. Tangible assets contain various subclasses, including current assets and fixed assets. Current assets include inventory, while fixed assets include such items as buildings and equipment.
Intangible assets are nonphysical resources and rights that have a value to the firm because they give the firm some kind of advantage in the market place. Examples of intangible assets are goodwill, copyrights, trademarks, patents and computer programs, and financial assets, including such items as accounts receivable, bonds and stocks.
An 'asset' in economic theory is an output good which can only be partially consumed (like a portable music player) or input as a factor of production (like a cement mixer) which can only be partially used up in production. The necessary quality for an asset is that value remains after the period of analysis so it can be used as a store of value. As such, financial instruments like corporate bonds and common stocks are assets because they store value for the next period. If the good or factor is used up before the next period, there would be nothing upon which to place a value.
As a result of this definition, assets only have positive futures prices. This is analogous to the distinction between consumer durables and non-durables. Durables last more than one year. A classic durable is an automobile. A classic non-durable is an apple, which is eaten and lasts less than one year. Assets are that category of output which economic theory places prices upon. In a simple Walrasian equilibrium model, there is but a single period and all items have prices. In a multi-period equilibrium model, while all items have prices in the current period. Only assets can survive into the next period and thus only assets can store value and as a result, only assets have a price today for delivery tomorrow. Items which depreciate 100% by tomorrow have no price for delivery tomorrow because by tomorrow it ceases to exist.
In intelligence, assets are persons within organizations or countries that are being spied upon who provide information for an outside spy. They are sometimes referred to as agents, and in law enforcement parlance, as confidential informants, or 'CI' for short.
There are different categories of assets, including people who:
In computer science, information hiding is the principle of segregation of the design decisions in a computer program that are most likely to change, thus protecting other parts of the program from extensive modification if the design decision is changed. The protection involves providing a stable interface which protects the remainder of the program from the implementation (the details that are most likely to change).
Written another way, information hiding is the ability to prevent certain aspects of a class or software component from being accessible to its clients, using either programming language features (like private variables) or an explicit exporting policy.
The term encapsulation is often used interchangeably with information hiding. Not all agree on the distinctions between the two though; one may think of information hiding as being the principle and encapsulation being the technique. A software module hides information by encapsulating the information into a module or other construct which presents an interface.