What is the difference between an individual, customer and a prospect?

The Ascent360 CDP has three different classifications for "people" records. These are:

1. Individuals: An individual is a unique contactable person in the database after matching and de-duplication. An individual can be either a Customer or a Prospect.
2. Customers: A Customer is any individual (unique contactable person) in the database that has made an attributable financial purchase. An attributable financial purchase is one where the transaction can be directly tied to the customer via a variety of methods. If a customer makes a purchase without providing information that would match the customer to the transaction, the individual may be imported into the database as a Prospect. 
3. Prospects: A Prospect is an individual (unique contactable person) who has not made a purchase. Typically, prospects will come from sources such as an email sign up form or a Facebook integration. In reality, some Prospects are actually Customers whose purchases were not attributed to them at point-of-sale. When a Prospect makes a purchase, Ascent360 will automatically change the Customer Status from "Prospect" to "Customer" for the individual.

All individuals in the database will be classified as a "Customer" or "Prospect" in the "Customer Status" field.