Supplying consumers through lower-cost imports is a benefit of free trade itself, not trade deficits, and preaching the virtues of having a foreign buying pool for Treasury securities is akin to saying that alcoholics benefit society by providing a customer base for liquor stores.
Many internet firms build a customer base by giving things away, be they search results or social-networking tools.
Independent distributors develop their organizations by either building an active customer base, who buy direct from the parent company, or by recruiting a downline of independent distributors who also build a customer base, thereby expanding the overall organization.
Yet a few companies are bucking the trend, buoyed by a diversified customer base and innovative technology.
The gaming industry is dominated by a male customer base, and game promotions usually feature large men with disproportionately large guns (can we say compensation?) or petite women with disproportionately large breasts (maybe the designers miss their mothers).
The business is relatively recession resistant and characterized by a fragmented customer base [states, provinces, counties, municipalities and road maintenance contractors] and stable or increasing prices.
Revenue at e-commerce giant Alibaba jumped 60% in the first three months of the year, powered by a growing customer base in China.
In that case, in Hunan in 2012, a Uyghur street vendor received over 30,000 US dollars as "compensation" for damage done to his cakes by a Han customer, based on the local court verdict.1 The court ordered an ethnic-majority member to pay as much as a minority member demanded.
