Quote:
Originally Posted by ApK
On the contrary, its USUALLY how companies are able to get make any money at all, build a customer base and survive.
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No, it isn't.
Companies are able to make money because their customers give it to them. They make money by having customers give them more money than they paid for whatever it is they're providing the customers. That is the
only way companies make any money.
Inducing those customers to give them more money, or getting additional customers to give them money, are just more means to that end: having customers give them money. Advertising boils down to one of those two things: either it gets your current customers to give you more money than they otherwise would have, or it gets you new customers to give you money that they otherwise wouldn't have. Advertising that does neither is wasted, and companies don't become large and successful by wasting money.
Serving the best interests of the customers -- or at least providing something the customers see as being in their best interest, which may not be the same thing at all -- is a form of advertising. It brings in absolutely no money, not one penny, itself. It costs money. It's the price paid to attract
other money. It's a way of getting existing customers to shell out more money, or of getting new customers, or at least of having customers not hold onto their money and/or migrate to the competition, which amounts to the same thing. What a person thinks about any given company doesn't matter two hoots to the people making the decisions
unless it affects whether or not that person gives them money.
Yes, doing things that make your customers happy can be an effective way of competing with other companies. But it's a
cost of doing business -- the price of profit, not profit in and of itself. If a company has a monopoly on things people need, they don't have to be nice; if a company is in close competition to sell things people merely want, image becomes everything. Coca-Cola is no less ruthless a company than Microsoft, but they know Coke drinkers can just as easily drink Pepsi instead, so they have to woo those soda drinkers while Microsoft has faced little real competition for years.