Creative's customers

Creative's customers

Posted Apr 4, 2008 0:55 UTC (Fri) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954)
Parent article: A creative example of the value of free drivers

Daniel_K, by making Creative's customers happier, was threatening Creative's chosen business strategy.

This is a misuse of the term "customer" that implies an irony, and business stupidity, that isn't there. The people in question are not customers. They are past customers, trying not to be current customers. No wonder Creative doesn't want them happy.

It's the same misnomer which often causes people to misapply the adage, "the customer is always right," thinking it means if someone goes into a business and demands something, the businessman should give it to him. What it really means is that if someone offers to buy something from you, and it's in your line of business, you should sell it to him (even if you think he shouldn't have it).

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Just because there is a perhaps long period between buying new hardware — significant hardware
purchases of mine were Dec '97, Mar '03, seems like a 5+ year cycle — and thus being most
likely a "past customer" as you call it, this does not mean that I could not be a future
customer of the particularly hardware vendors I am biased towards. That is, unless they make
such a fuss.