In the Marketing, introduction book, there are two sentences one of which there is a use of apostrophe, but not the second.
A. Societal marketing concept: The idea that a company’s marketing
decisions should consider consumers’ wants, the company’s
requirements, consumers’ long-run interests, and society’s long-run
interests.B. The societal marketing concept questions whether the pure marketing
concept overlooks possible conflicts between consumer short-run wants
and consumer long-run welfare.
Why in the first sentence apostrophe is used and not in the second one?
I read many different posts of the use of apostrophe and I still don't get it. If you have two nouns, how would you decide whether it is a case of an attributive noun and hence omit the apostrophe or a possessive noun and hence use the apostrophe?
Best Answer
Because in the first paragraph, the noun 'consumers' is used with possessive ('s). Something like
students' motorbikes. And in the second paragraph, it serves as an attributive noun. Read it altogether -consumer short-run wants. Something likehot chicken soup.How to decide? Well, if it looks natural with possessive, you can go for it (as in your example). But then if it looks odd, don't use it. It all depends on the context/sentence structure. For instance, it does not sound okay if you use 'possessive' here - 'Manchester's football player'. But it does, when you say - "... conflicts between consumer's short-run wants and..."