Parallel Customer vs. Primary/Secondary Customer

Systems Economics Lexicon · Reading the Enterprise Barcode

Co-customers split into two relationship types, determined by contract status with the enterprise — not by anything about how the product is used.

Parallel Customers exist when both co-customers have the same type of relationship with the enterprise: either both hold a contract with it, or neither does. Virtual transaction platforms are a clean example — both the buyer and the seller typically have accounts and terms with the platform itself.

Primary/Secondary Customers exist when only one co-customer holds a contract with the enterprise. That user becomes the Primary Customer, recorded in the Customer Field; the other becomes the Secondary Customer, recorded in the Co-Customer Field. A package delivery service is the book’s example: the sender establishes a relationship with the carrier, but the recipient never does.

The classification runs on the plain legal sense of “contract” — an agreement voluntarily entered by two or more parties intending to create legal obligations between them — checked against each co-customer independently, not against how central either party feels to the transaction.

See also: Co-Customer · The Nine-Marker System

Part of Reading the Enterprise Barcode, course 4 of 7 in the Locus Theory series. For the full term-by-term specification, see the Lexicon.