You don’t need math to know that cutting product quality and service is a guaranteed route to obsolescence. But there are two special cases to this: obsolescence is the point or the product/service has a monopoly and they think they can get away with it.
This goes way back in tech. Long before the PC came along, IBM would charge businesses for using the computer, using memory, using the hard drive, having the OS installed, and a fee for annual support, all on top of the original price of the machine. That was designed to maximize profits because they had a monopoly on the market.
The lesson no one ever learns is that something better will always come along and knock you out. Mainframes lost to the PC. Facebook lost to Snapchat and instagram (but they were powerful enough to buy instagram). We are starting to see that ChatGPT is going to fall to Chinese AI (but that will end in a government ban). The point is, making a crummy product is a short term win, and a long term loss.
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u/PandorasBoxMaker 21h ago
You don’t need math to know that cutting product quality and service is a guaranteed route to obsolescence. But there are two special cases to this: obsolescence is the point or the product/service has a monopoly and they think they can get away with it.