The customer is king. The customer comes first. The customer is the reason for your existence. These are common adages strongly associated with marketing. However, based on real life examples drawn from one's own experience, the author brings to light the limitations of adhering to this philosophy to its extreme, and advocates adopting a more realistic stance, i.e., "Do not say yes, when you have to say no."

The first thing most marketers are taught when they join a company as trainees is the `customer is supreme' doctrine. "Do whatever you want, but never displease your customer" was what the Managing Director of my first company advised all the management trainees, during the first interactive meeting we had with him. While this had happened more than 30 years ago, I am sure even now the subject most harped upon in a majority of corporate training rooms is the importance of being customer-centric.

Having been a hardcore marketer myself for the best part of my career, and having chosen academics to play my second innings, prima facie I have no issue with "everything revolves around the customer" philosophy. However, having observed corporate affairs from close quarters (or should I say the box seat?), and finally with some gray hair (I am glad I am left with some), I sometimes wonder whether companies overdo this `anything for the customer' act. I know this statement might have already made some eyebrows raise by now. But one should be gracious enough to see both sides of the coin. After all, divergence is not a taboo anymore in progressive thinking organizations. Hence, this article!

Madhya Bharat Tubes (MBT) was engaged in the manufacture of precision steel tubes. During the 1980s, there were only four or five major manufacturers of steel tubes in the country. MBT was number two in terms of volume and had been making profits ever since it started its operations in a small town in Madhya Pradesh during the mid 1970s.

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