This is a topic that is often debated. Consumer has become the more generic term, particularly when speaking about the economy and about legal rights of people.

This is a topic that is often debated. Consumer has become the more generic term, particularly when speaking about the economy and about legal rights of people. Though it has the negative connotation from "consumerism" which is why the word is controversial and not considered polite. In this particular case, there are two ways to read the statement from 23andMe. You could interpret "consumers" as the people who have actually bought a product from 23andMe. Or, you could interpret it as the overall population of people who have health information and may buy the product. With the first interpretation, I think "customers" would definitely be the better word and would fit with typical business etiquette. Though I think the second interpretation is what 23andMe actually meant, in which case "consumers" or "people" would be more appropriate. If I had written the 23andMe blog post, I would have used "people". Comparing the google search results for "empower consumers" and "empower people" is quite interesting.