If one asserts that buying customers below what they charge them is a corporate strategy, this is in essence an arbitrage game, and arbitrage games rarely last.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Roughly speaking, when you are dealing with business firms operating in a competitive system, you can assume that they're going to act rationally. Why? Because someone in a firm who buys things at $10 and sells them for $8.00 isn't going to last very long in that firm.
Markets work when people can evaluate the prices and risks of different products, then pick the ones that work best for them. But when the terms of the deal are hidden, competition doesn't work. And customers aren't the only ones who are hurt.
Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do.
They will come to learn in the end, at their own expense, that it is better to endure competition for rich customers than to be invested with monopoly over impoverished customers.
There are two kinds of companies, those that work to try to charge more and those that work to charge less. We will be the second.
As someone with a deep faith in competition and the market, I also know that markets only work with tough enforcement of the rules that guarantee competition and fair play - and that the pressure to break those rules only gets stronger as the amount of money involved gets larger.
Through their own actions, customers can hold companies responsible to higher standards of social responsibility. Through collective action, they can leverage their dollars to combat the force of those investors who myopically pursue profits at the expense of the rest of society.
It is customers that decide if we succeed.
Every time we bring someone in we ensure that they are a strategic thinker, but even more important that they understand that if the products aren't successful and the products don't sell that there won't be anything to strategize about.
Look at market fluctuations as your friend rather than your enemy; profit from folly rather than participate in it.