Is the ลูกค้า Unimportant?

[MartinL]

While I’m often reluctant to speak Thai because my pronunciation is awful, despite efforts to practise, I have a reasonable vocabulary and am at a point where I’m starting to analyse the composition of words more, instead of just accepting that ‘X’ in Thai means ‘Y’ in English.

A word I’ve used for ‘customer’ is ลูกค้า , but it’s not something I’d use often.

I know that ลูก means child. I’ve very recently found that it also means ‘subordinate, junior, lesser partner(?)’. So the word ลูกค้า means ‘subordinate in doing business’ – correct interpretation or not, please?

There’s an adage in some of our western countries – “The customer is always right”, i.e. the customer is important (or at least should be made to feel that way). The Thai word seems to suggest the exact opposite – the customer is an unimportant part in a purchase, something I prefer not to be.

I’m not getting hot & bothered by this, just interested, but it seems it could explain some of the poor customer service I see here. Also a nice illustration of the status-driven Thai culture.

If, instead of ลูกค้า I used something like e.g. คนค้า or คนซื้อ , both of which seem, to me, to convey a sense of buyer/seller having equal status, would it be understood?

With a bit more searching, I find that ‘employee’ is ลูกจ้าง , an employed subordinate, which seems more appropriate.

Thanks for any insights. As I said, I’m interested rather than bothered by this.

[Typingdog]

The seller is แม่ค้า พ่อค้า

Buyer is ลูกค้า

I think the meaning of it is taking care of customer like your own kid

Customer service lol

They treat those who look rich and spend lot of money like a king! In the opposite...

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[MaeJoMTB]

and the price is RA-KA

Edited October 13, 2015 by MaeJoMTB