[martinkallstrom]

His math is not off, I get about the same using http://www.moneychimp.com/calculator/compound_interest_calcu...

When he said 5% profit he meant 5% interest. Result depends on the figures you put in, but if you can get people to spend hundreds of dollars on your business every year of their life, you are probably in possession of a mechanism providing interest well over 12% or 15% annually. Which makes the value per customer much higher.

IKEA is one of the companies that successfully transformed the culture of one or several nations to their own benefit and routinely creates lifetime customers from infant to the grave.

[corin_]

Ah, assuming a profit of $500 does make the maths make sense.

But $500 profit a year from a single customer is way above the average for the majority of businesses.

[martinkallstrom]

So it follows that the majority of businesses does not make trillions of dollars either. :)

Still, there are several businesses that are making on average over $100-500/year profits on me. More or less my bank, car maker, gas station, energy company, furniture store, favorite soda brand, supermarket, fast food chain... what else? Scary thought.

[hessenwolf]

Your bank might not be. They are often just acting as a middle man and lending money to you that they borrowed from the bond market, taking the spread as their admin expenses.