Though other Web sites are free, Cook's Illustrated continues to charge for most of its content, choosing to have a small, profitable site rather than a large unprofitable one.
The domestics learned the hard way that ceding one segment of the market, even a historically unprofitable one like small cars, means ceding customers who don't come back.
When Mr. Jozoff took control of Dial in 1996, he introduced new products, cast off other unprofitable ones and cut prices on core brands.
Get two unprofitable ones trading at absurd prices.
The polluting companies her husband campaigned against remain open and the authorities have closed only unprofitable ones, she says.
Initially, moreover, the incumbent will find being disrupted very pleasant, because the customers that defect first are likely to be the unprofitable ones.
In 1933, a Northwestern University professor named Horace Secrist produced a book-length example of the fallacy in "The Triumph of Mediocrity in Business," in which he argued that, since highly profitable firms tend to become less profitable, and highly unprofitable ones tend to become less unprofitable, all firms will soon be mediocre.
There have been lean years (2006) and there have been unprofitable ones: 2001 and 2002 saw Microsoft make its first losses as the planet struggled to come to terms with the dotcom bust and the attacks in New York and Washington in 2001.
Fear of Sarbanes-Oxley abounds, and managers want to know which customers are profitable, so they can reward them and then dump the unprofitable ones.
