Both things get called staging in ordinary market talk, and the industry does distinguish them. Strictly, staging means preparing a property to appeal to buyers, which can happen with furniture brought in or with what's already there.
The vacant condo is vacant staging. The stager supplies furniture, rugs, art, lamps, and accessories from their own inventory or a rental house, installs it, leaves it for the marketing period, and removes it after closing. You're paying for furniture rental time, design work, delivery, and labor in and out. It's the expensive version because someone is physically moving a household of furniture twice.
What your friend got is usually called occupied staging, or a staging consultation if it stopped at advice. The seller's own furniture stays, and the stager edits: removes clutter and personal items, rearranges what's there, sometimes brings in a few accent pieces. Consultations are commonly sold as a flat fee for a walkthrough with a written list the seller executes themselves, which is why no truck showed up.
One more term worth keeping separate. Virtual staging is furniture added to listing photos digitally, so the house stays empty in person. That's a photo service, and most states require the listing to disclose that images are virtually staged, with the specific rules varying by state and by MLS.
Since you come at this from the paper side, the thing that connects: staging costs are usually seller-paid at or before closing, sometimes deferred until the sale, which makes the stager an unsecured creditor waiting on a transaction that may not happen.
