Sometimes companies make horrible, ridiculous, customer-alienating decisions because they want to cultivate a certain image or effect rather than because of sales or profit. What are the biggest blunders you’ve seen? Here are two:
Sony removes backwards compatibility from the PS3 with the release of new models. They did it because they wanted to force people to buy more PS3 games (which were and generally remain few and terrible) instead of relying on the back catalogue of PS1 and PS2 games, flying in the face of multiple statements of how backwards compatibility was a big priority and that they were creating a dynasty of systems, not separate ones.
Starbucks discontinues breakfast sandwiches because they want to get back to being a “coffee shop” and not a fast food place. The sandwiches have been a rousing success, but were interfering with their precious image.
I don’t have one to add to the list (not yet; I’m thinking about it), but I need to comment on this one. Who the hell is Starbucks kidding?!? The store that sells roughly 17 caramel- or fruit-laced milkshakes for every cup of coffee they sell, the store that subjects me to the dreaded Tunnel of Norah Jones CDs ™ on my way to the checkout counter, is worried they’re straying from their core business? Not to sound too much like you, TLDR, but fuck those guys.
Andrew Lloyd Webber hated the recording of ex-wife Sarah Brightman in his “Song & Dance” so much that he bought most of the LPS and refused to release it on CD for the longest time, despite fans begging for it.
He finally relented last year and released the 2CD set.
Well, the Apple III was built without a cooling fan because…Steve Jobs didn’t like the noise of cooling fans.
Apparently, this caused—among other problems—chips growing so hot that they’d pop out of their sockets, and Apple’s official tech support advice was to lift the keyboard an inch or so off the your desk, then drop it, to knock the chips back in.
When did this happen? I was in a Starbucks about a week ago and they were there. I don’t personally think they look very appetizing but they were certainly available.
Boeing proposed an aerial tanker based on its aging 767 airframe instead of its popular 777 or still-being-designed 787 “Dreamliner”. The 767 was technically inferior to the EADS offering, an Airbus A380 modification, but Boeing hoped that old-fashioned U.S. protectionism would win them the contract. They held out this hope despite the facts that they were clearly proposing a loser, that they had been caught cheating on an earlier draft of the same contract, and that they had to know the Air Force was under huge pressure to be 100% fair and transparent in their selection process. All of this in the face of reason, just so that the obsolete 767 production line could stay open another few years.
The Boeing offering lost the competition in all five decision criteria, and now all Congress can do is kill the program – there’s not even a legal way for Congress to reverse the Air Force’s decision!
On a freezing New Year’s Day in 1962, The Beatles loaded up their gear and headed south to Decca Records. They recorded 15 tracks in all, comprising a wide range of standards, stage favourites and three unique recordings of early McCartney-Lennon collaborations. The Beatles were later turned down on the premise that guitar groups were ‘on their way out’!
“Speaking with the Wall Street Journal, Sony Computer Entertainment America President Jack Tretton said the purpose behind removing backward compatibility was to push PS3 software. According to the Journal story, Tretton “conceded that removing that capability, along with a few other features, isn’t dramatically reducing Sony’s cost of manufacturing the console but will instead encourage buyers of the entry-level PlayStation 3 to purchase more games designed specifically for the new system.””
Although, that’s totally sales-motivated, so it doesn’t really fit the question posed by the OP.
I don’t know how well the sandwiches are selling, but if I remember right, Starbucks is trying to fight off improved coffee from McDonald’s and other places. So there may be more to that than the image thing.
I’m not going to bet the mortgage on the truth of this, but it is said that GM continued the production of the Corvair past its originally planned end-of-life, purely to avoid the impression that they were giving in to Nader. Quoth Wiki:
If this is true, GM decided, “No one will buy this car. Let’s keep making 'em to spite Nader!” So, there’s a decision not motivated by sales.
As I just got chewed out because my client, a Managing Director, misquoted me to his boss (C-suite level), I’ll conclude with sometimes the lower ranks might now all the give and take better than the guy at the top.*
*Not a knock on the guy at the top, just that the guys focused on hitting a $399 price point on a PS3, including whoever presented the decision to the CEO, might understand better the list of trade-offs, whereas the CEO is juggling many, many different balls at the same time
Maybe they don’t mind marketing all sorts of extraneous crap as long as people don’t start demanding or depending on it.
Fruity shakes and CDs are impulse promotions. People expect them to change frequently.
Breakfast sandwiches are standbys. People want the same damn one most mornings. And they have to be served hot.
General Electric selling their GEnie online service. It made no financial sense, since it used GE excess computing power when the company was closed down; any money from GEnie was pure gravy. In addition, Jack Welsh’s stated aim was to be in the top three in any industry they were in, and GEnie was in the top three of the online services (with AOL and CompuServe).
What made it worse was that they turned down an offer by a group of GEnie sysops (including someone who was involved in getting AOL off the ground) in favor of a lower-priced offer by Yovelle Renaissance Corporation, which was created solely to make the bid and was run by IDT, a long distance reseller that was known for shady practices (including being under indictment). They ran the service into the ground in six months due to gross incompetence.
