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The true purpose of a business is to create and keep a customer, not to make you money.
Theodore Levitt
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Interpretation

What this quote means

A successful business focuses on customer satisfaction rather than just profit.

The quote emphasizes that the fundamental aim of a business should be to serve the needs and retain the loyalty of its customers. When a business prioritizes creating value for customers, the profits will naturally follow as a result of satisfied and loyal clientele.

Themes

BusinessCustomerProfitValueLoyalty

In practice

Example use cases

This quote could be used in a business seminar to highlight the importance of customer satisfaction.

More from Theodore Levitt

Organizations exist to enable ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
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Selling concerns itself with the tricks and techniques of getting people to exchange their cash for your product. It is not concerned with the values that the exchange is all about. And it does not, as marketing invariable does, view the entire business process as consisting of a tightly integrated effort to discover, create, arouse and satisfy customer needs.
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A powerful force drives the world toward a converging commonality, and that force is technology. … Almost everyone everywhere wants all the things they have heard about, seen, or experienced via the new technologies.
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You want to dig your well where you have the best chance of finding water with the least amount of digging
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