I don't necessarily agree with this; for example, let's say you're not a major shareholder but a "lowly" AP holder. Does it matter to you whether Disney spends $2B on MM+ vs. new park attractions? Absolutely it does... because one (MM+) has far less use to an AP holder than new attractions would.
As a customer, you have every right to know if a giant capital expenditure by the company will negatively impact your experience (ala cuts to recoup losses from MM+). The "Disney offers a service that one can either reject or accept and support" mentality is part of what's caused this mess in the first place.
Yes, you do vote with your dollars and if you don't like how they're running the company, you can spend them elsewhere but that shouldn't mean that TDO can do whatever it likes without questioning or discussing it with their customers. How many customers would choose magic bands over a glut of new attractions?
A company should always compete for their customers' dollars and have an open dialogue with their customers to find out how to do an even better job. When instead, a company acts like they have no responsibility to anyone but their shareholders and tells their customers to deal with it or go pound sand, they're doomed to fail.
Take care of your customers and employees first and they'll take care of your shareholders and bottom line. Answer only to shareholders while viewing your customer as a resource to be milked dry... and eventually your customer/employee will leave to find someone who listens to them or, even better, anticipates their needs before they even know what they are. Hello Universal.
As a customer you have the right to get upset, stop using a companies services or file never ending complaints but a customer does not have a right to know about giant capital expeditures at all, the fact we know anything is simply a benefit of insider information. The board has a right to know, even shareholders have a right at a certain level of expenditure but not a customer. If a local grocery store decides to upgrade their entire register, inventory, scheduling, online, pharmacy and accounting systems, it is not a customer right to know how much they are spending at all. There will also be impacts to the customers during the transistion and testing phases that may cause longer lines, cashier training issues, management problems, and may result in the grocery store losing some customers during the transition. If the store management had any clue they would account for some of those in the cost of the project to better forecast the real expense.
In TDOs case, they had a
very outdated backend data network full of disjointed, incompatible systems that required a massive upgrade sooner than later. The integration projects that seem to be going on in the background to consolidate systems to support long-term strategic growth, the ability to expand or add new features and the new "features" we know of today to track movement, plan resources, and support marketing through data analysis is quite complex and very expensive to implement even on a small scale.
I agree with you that a company should compete for customer dollars, they all compete just in different ways. Not all companies follow the same path to acheive their primary goal; to separate you from your hard earned cash and customers may find the products offered by company A are more compelling than company B. Just look at iPhone vs. Android, XBONE vs PS4 and so on. Each company has a product they are selling, in most cases it is simply a matter of price except the iPhone which is still the #1 phone made but Android OS is more popular because of the vast variety of phones, options and a lot of times cost. If a company does not provide a product or service you are willing to pay for at their price point simply walk away, I do it all the time.
Any company will bleed you dry of cash if they can as a matter of practice, even your local dry-cleaners will do all your laundry for you for a price (too steep in my opinion) but they will milk you for everthing they can, WDW is no different except in the product set and method.
[/QUOTE]
