What EA should not do :|
Companies should only make decisions that benefit their customers
“You would go to a store and people, if they knew you worked for Coke, would attack you verbally,” said Phil Mooney, Archivist for the Coca Cola Company. “People were very passionate about it and it became very uncomfortable to be associated with the company at that time, there were protests in the streets, people would flood our telephone lines. We got thousands and thousands of letters from consumers demanding that we bring back the original formula.” Phil Mooney was talking about what happened when Coca Cola decided to change their formula for Coke, this showed that when companies make decisions that that their customers won’t like, the company could lose popularity. Some people believe that big companies should only make decisions that they know their community will like, while others believe that the company should only make decisions that benefit the company’s sales, no matter what the customers want. It is clear that companies should only make decisions that benefit their customers. This is because the company could lose money, make people angry, or make things inconvenient for them.
One reason that companies should make decisions that benefit the customers is because when they don’t, they make less money. According to the article “the most hated company overhauls of all time,” by Gabrielle Olya, on finance.yahoo.com, Netflix, back in 2011, was going to launch something called quikster. Quikster was supposed to be a 6 dollar monthly subscription that let you use their dvd-by-mail service. The problem was that Netflix already had their dvd-by-mail service on their 10 dollar monthly subscription, but they were going to remove it so that they could make put it on Quikster instead, which made the users have to buy to separate subscriptions for 16 dollars a month for the same thing they were already paying for, but for only 10 dollars a month. “This move cost Netflix 800,000 subscribers,” CNN reported, which shows us that Netflix did something that did not benefit their customer. They lost a bunch of people paying for their subscription, so they lost a lot of money. It was so bad that Netflix shut down Quikster before it even launched. This shows that companies should make decisions that benefit their customers. According to finance.yahoo.com, another company that lost a lot of money was Frito-Lay when they launched their 100% compostable bag. “The noisy new bags prompted 44,000 people to join a Facebook group called, ‘Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag.’ And it wasn't just on social media that people complained about the change — they also protested the change with their wallets, and sales of the chips declined 11%.” This shows that when Frito-Lay released their new bag, it was very loud and people did not like it so they stopped buying the chips. The company lost a lot of money because of this, which makes it harder to pay the people that work there, which was a decision that did not benefit the customers, which affected sales.
Another reason that companies should make decisions based on what benefits their customers is that decisions that don’t benefit them could make them angry. Yahoo.finance.com explains that when coca-cola made a different version of coke called ‘new coke’ to replace the old one, people were not happy and started protesting that they bring back the old coke. "There were protests in the streets, people would flood our telephone lines. We got thousands and thousands of letters from consumers demanding that we bring back the original formula," Phil Mooney, archivist for the Coca-Cola Co., told Matzav.com. This is important because when coca-cola changed their recipe, it only made people very angry and made them protest to bring the old coke back. Coca Cola got thousands of emails to change the formula back to the original. Even though coca-cola made the new coke to try and compete with pepsi, no one asked for it so they just got a lot of hate. This decision did not benefit the customers, it just made an unnecessary change to a beloved drink. Another example of this, from finance.yahoo.com, is when a company called slack changed their logo, even though people already liked their old logo. Many people started to hate it online and they said it resembled a swastika, “The new logo was ill-received by users and the media alike. The Twitterverse noted comparisons between the new logo and Microsoft's logo and, worse, said it resembled a multicolored swastika.” This demonstrates what can happen when a company makes a decision that doesn’t benefit their customers or changes something that doesn’t need to be changed. Slack made a decision with their logo to change it to something that resembles a swastika. This just makes people angry, and the company will get backlash. This makes the company lose popularity, and it could distract people from bigger problems going on in the world.
Finally, making things less convenient also contributes to my claim. One example includes the sun chips bag again, because the bag was really loud. “The noisy new bags prompted 44,000 people to join a Facebook group called, ’Sorry But I Can't Hear You Over This SunChips Bag.’" This supports the idea that they make things less convenient because at least 44,000 people noticed that the bags were really really loud. This made things less convenient because people couldn’t hear others over the noise of the bag. Something inconvenient for customers can affect sales in a way that does not help the company. The decision was a good choice but it was not the right time to do it because the noise that the bags were making was dangerously high, 95 decibels, which is a lot. Another example includes Netflix launching Quikster again, from finance.yahoo.com. “Netflix announced that its DVD-by-mail service and streaming service would now require two separate subscriptions.” This quote supports my subclaim because it shows that by making there have to be two subscriptions, people might lose track of them. This would make it a lot less convenient. This also would make things more expensive and not everyone could afford it, which did not benefit the customer.
Overall, it is clear that companies should make decisions that benefit the customer, because the company could lose a lot of money, they could make the customers protest, which makes the company less popular, and make things harder for the customer, making the company less convenient, and the customers wanting to use another company’s product. This matters because if companies don’t do these things then the company will lose money, so their workers won’t be paid as much or could lose their jobs because the company can’t afford to have as much, making it harder for the workers to be able to live.
"New Coke: 25 Years after Marketing Blunder of the Century." Matzav.com, Matzav Media Network, 23 Apr. 2010, matzav.com/new-coke-25-years-after-marketing-blunder-of-the-century/. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Olya, Gabrielle. "The Most-Hated Company Overhauls of All Time." yahoo!finance, Yahoo Inc., 6 Sept. 2021, finance.yahoo.com/news/most-hated-company-overhauls-time-110017663.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAV8jRXl2rD9AoNkSUE1RxUsE1nAYN_OJBULK0oZIOXmNULsbaOkn0HRZwpEy-eWT8hMetvqY4lhLG_bvBN_Sj6ZgZMLnWWGsmbpVBLVTQR4_3AhgYuGwWz7Ua87xyGBEhH4aBYKKv01QlvqyGdNqZSUg2DI3IWUmAcoe3c00X6E. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
Osman, Husain. "23 Cancel Culture Examples: Brands That Have Been Cancelled." Enzuzo.com, Enzuzo, 17 June 2024, www.enzuzo.com/blog/cancel-culture-examples. Accessed 11 Feb. 2026.
I had no idea where else to put this, I just don’t want to get a bad grade on my essay so I had to put it somewhere :(
