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Customers

In this document, you’ll learn about Customers and their relation to other entities in Medusa.

Introduction

Customers are individuals that make purchases in your store. In Medusa, there are two types of customers: registered customers and guests or unregistered customers.

Both registered and unregistered customers can make purchases. However, only registered customers can log into their accounts and manage their details and orders.

An admin user can view and manage their customers, their details, their orders, and what customer group they’re in.


Customer Entity Overview

A customer is stored in the database as a CustomerCopy to Clipboard entity. A customer has attributes related to the customer’s details such as first_nameCopy to Clipboard, last_nameCopy to Clipboard, and phoneCopy to Clipboard. However, the only required attribute is emailCopy to Clipboard.

has_account Attribute

As mentioned earlier, customers can be either registered or unregistered. The type of customer is identified in the has_accountCopy to Clipboard attribute. This is a boolean attribute that indicates whether the customer is registered.

For example, when a guest customer places an order, a new CustomerCopy to Clipboard record is created with the email used (if it doesn’t already exist) and the value for has_accountCopy to Clipboard is falseCopy to Clipboard. When the unregistered customer creates an account using the same email, a new CustomerCopy to Clipboard record will be created with the value of has_accountCopy to Clipboard set to trueCopy to Clipboard.

Email Uniqueness

An email is unique to a type of customer. So, an email can be associated with only one registered customer (where has_accountCopy to Clipboard is trueCopy to Clipboard), and one unregistered customer (where has_accountCopy to Clipboard is falseCopy to Clipboard).

In the example mentioned above, after the unregistered customer places an order with an email, then creates an account with the same email, two CustomerCopy to Clipboard records are created. Each of these records have different has_accountCopy to Clipboard value.

This architecture allows creating the Claim Order flow, where a registered customer can claim an order they placed as an unregistered customer. You can learn more about it in this documentation.


Relations to Other Entities

CustomerGroup

Customer groups allow dividing customers into groups of similar attributes, then apply special pricing or rules for these customer groups.

You can learn more about customer groups in this documentation.

A customer can belong to more than one customer group. The relation between the CustomerCopy to Clipboard and CustomerGroupCopy to Clipboard entities is available on both entities:

  • You can access the customer groups of a customer by expanding the groupsCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing customer.groupsCopy to Clipboard.
  • You can access the customers in a customer group by expanding the customersCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing customerGroup.customersCopy to Clipboard.

Orders

Customers can have more than one order. The relation between the CustomerCopy to Clipboard and OrderCopy to Clipboard entities is available on both entities:

  • You can access the orders of a customer by expanding the ordersCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing customer.ordersCopy to Clipboard.
  • You can access the customer that placed an order by expanding the customerCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing order.customerCopy to Clipboard.

Address

A customer can have a billing address and more than one shipping address. Both billing and shipping addresses are represented by the AddressCopy to Clipboard entity.

The relation between the CustomerCopy to Clipboard and AddressCopy to Clipboard entities is available on both entities:

  • You can access the billing address of a customer by expanding the billing_addressCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing customer.billing_addressCopy to Clipboard. You can also access the shipping addresses of a customer by expanding the shipping_addressesCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing customer.shipping_addressesCopy to Clipboard.
  • Likewise, you can access the customer that an address is associated with by expanding the customerCopy to Clipboard relation and accessing address.customerCopy to Clipboard.

See Also

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