breaknwind wrote:
Didn't P.T. Barnum coin a phrase about PREORDERING things
We can blame the business guidebooks. You know, in the old days it was enough to ask customers after the purchase, are they satisfied or not. Then act accordingly.
Then we sifted to the world, were companies actively tried to find out what customer would need/want, before making the stuff.
Now the latest trend is that you should actually make customers buy the stuff before even making the final decision of production. The idea being, that if nobody buys any, you can pull the plug early enough and not waste money. Waste the company's money, that is.
Many forms in this, from growd sourcing to preorders....but yeah, that's the stuff teached at business schools today and it's spreading like heck also outside the traditional users, say real estate business.