Why do we say "The Customer is Always Right"?

Background:

We’ve all grown up hearing this phrase when it comes to any retail establishment we patronize. (Whether or not businesses actually adhere to the motto is another matter.) The saying became popular in the early 20th century and was meant to emphasize superior customer service. (Apparently telling a customer they’re mistaken is bad for business, even if it’s true.)

Before this saying became commonplace, the typical attitude toward customers was one of caveat emptor – i.e., “let the buyer beware.” In the late 19th century, however, prominent Chicago merchant Potter Palmer (1826-1902) set out to radically reshape the shopping experience. Some of the innovations he implemented included providing credit directly to women shoppers, allowing customers to take items home before finalizing their purchase, and creating a “no questions asked” return policy. He revolutionized Chicago retail, transforming State Street into downtown Chicago’s premier shopping district. In 1865, he partnered with Marshall Field (1834-1906) and Levi Leiter (1834-1904) to form Marshall Field & Company.

Many attribute the phrase “The customer is always right” to Marshall Field’s employee Harry Selfridge (1858-1947), who started as a stock boy in 1879 and worked his way up to junior partner, before retiring in 1904. He’s credited with many retail innovations himself, including the first in-store tea room, ground floor perfume counters, open-shelf product displays, gift certificates, bargain basements, and the annual clearance sale. He also popularized the use of the phrase, “Only [x] shopping days until Christmas!” After selling his stock in the company he moved to London and opened his own retail establishment – Selfridge’s – where he implemented many of the innovations he developed in Chicago.

There’s no evidence Selfridge ever coined “The customer is always right,” however, and may even have objected to it. In his 1918 book, The Romance of Commerce, he wrote:

The time has passed when an irritable customer, no matter who he or she may be, can, whether right or wrong, ride roughshod over the young man or woman behind the counter and demand his or her dismissal, and it is a good thing it is so.

The earliest use of the phrase “The customer is always right” shows up in a Boston Globe article from 1905. In it, the reporter discusses Marshall Field’s payment of taxes, and writes:

Every employe [sic], from cash boy up, is taught absolute respect for and compliance with the business principles which Mr. Field practices. Broadly speaking, Mr. Field adheres to the theory that 'the customer is always right.' He must be a very untrustworthy trader to whom this concession is not granted.

This attribution to Field is repeated in a 1919 article from The Magazine of Business:

Field, it is well known, was the first to say, "The customer is always right."

Thus, some consider Marshall Field himself the originator of the saying. However…

Historian John William Tebbel is one of the most prominent scholars arguing that Field never said any such thing, that the actual phrase was "Assume the customer is right until it is plain beyond all question that he is not."

It’s also possible the idiom was a variation of customer service philosophy originating in another country. Examples include le client n'a jamais tort ('the customer is never wrong'), which was the slogan of hotelier César Ritz (founder of the Ritz hotels). Another various appears in Germany: der Kunde ist König ('the customer is king'), while in Japan the motto okyakusama wa kamisama desu ('the customer is a god') is common.

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