Who Stole My Customer??: Winning Strategies for Creating and Sustaining Customer Loyalty

Chapter 2. A Boutique, Alternative Strategy of the 1990s

What is more difficult to manage than a struggling young company? The answer is often a previously successful old company—and the more success that a firm has enjoyed in the past, the harder it can be to maintain. The enemy at that automobile company was not bad managers, but rather bad management practices, which were once the accepted norms and remain well entrenched in established firms today.

The company merely reflected the mindset of its industry; automobile manufacturing has historically been a product-focused enterprise, and product-focused traditionally meant from an internal or company viewpoint. Until recently this was true of most manufacturing endeavors and not just automobile ...