In fact, what is routinely called “capitalism” is more accurately described as “consumerism,” wherein the customer is sovereign—those with the gold rule. While the marketing concept has existed for decades, it is regularly ignored because businesses routinely lose sight of the fact that the sole rea- son they exist is to serve customers outside of their four walls.
A company exists to serve real flesh-and-blood people, not some mass of demographics known as “the market.” As Stanley Marcus (the son of one of the founders of Neiman-Marcus) used to love to point out, no market ever purchased anything in one of his stores, but a lot of customers came in and bought things and made him a rich man. In the final analysis, a business does not exist to be efficient, control costs, perform cost accounting, or give people fancy titles and power over the lives of others. It exists to create results and wealth outside of itself. This profound lesson must not be forgotten.
Unfortunately, in many instances, this lesson has never been learned. The conventional wisdom in business is to buy low and sell high and measure the bottom line by the historical profit-and-loss statement, which any first-year accounting student can manipulate. Our 500-year-old accounting model is