[tivert]

>> You mean, make the most money? Nobody cares about making customers happy.

> Well if you get assigned bad seats you might not come back, for this sort of thing I would say happy customers would lead back into more money

There's a lot of space between making customers so unhappy they never return and making them happy. The smart capitalist will eagerly trade the happiness if his customers for more profit, so long as he doesn't hit a tipping point that destroys his business.

[amptorn]

I heard of a story where Walmart did an experiment in one of their stores where they rearranged all of the displays, made the aisles wider, all sorts of things which made the shopping experience more pleasant and less stressful. Customer feedback was almost unanimously positive; people loved shopping at Walmart now, when previously it had been a hostile and Kafkaesque experience.

But they spent less money.

So Walmart put everything back the way it was.

[brokenmachine]

Just like McDonalds with its seating that is just the right amount of uncomfortable to get the customer out of there ASAP after eating, but not quite that uncomfortable that they wouldn't go there at all.

I feel this goes on a lot in retail as well, eg music in clothing stores. Also Ikea with its mazes and the milk always being at the furthest end of the supermarket.

As someone who is quite sensitive to such uncomfortable situations, I'm at the end of the bell curve that finds the whole experience so unpleasant that I just avoid stores mostly.