15 Worst Business Decisions Ever

Apple-1

5 – Beatles,

beatles

  • 1962, a time before the Beatles were celebrities – they auditioned at Decca Records in London and the executive of talent rejected their performance
  • He said to his manager, groups are out and four-piece groups with guitars are finished
  • Unfortunately for him, over 2 billion Beatles albums sold all over the world in Beatlemania

4 – New Coke,

221

  • It’s hard to imagine that Coke has been around for over a hundred years, and it was hard to foresee that when the producers of Coca-Cola introduced a new formula under the brand of New Coke, the backlash would be intense
  • But that’s exactly what happened – despite New Coke tasting fine, the emotional attachment built over a hundred years from a consistent brand was too deep, and customers exploded with fury
  • Within 3 months, New Coke was gone and Coke Classic returned to enormously high sales numbers thanks to all that controversy

3 – Blockbuster,

Blockbuster

  • A more recent one, the year 2000 when video rental stores were booming, Netflix offered itself to help Blockbuster sell their brand online
  • Blockbuster did NOT accept their offer and instead had a terrible 10 years while internet movies and tv shows became a thing, eventually filing for bankruptcy in 2010
  • They could’ve bought Netflix for $50 million and instead, their stubbornness made them crumble into nothing

2 – M*A*S*H,

423469

  • 1972, M*A*S*H became a surprise hit for 20th Century Fox, but then a couple of big stars dropped out after a few seasons and Fox panicked
  • Foreseeing the show wouldn’t have long to live, they decided to sell rights for old seasons to various local TV stations, earning $25 million dollars
  • But then 4 years later, a thing Fox thought extremely unlikely happened – the show was still massively popular, each TV station grossed over a million dollars per aired episode out of 168 and Fox got nothing

1 – Wal-Mart

walmart

  • A story about one of the few times when marketing fails and customer support wins – a war between K-Mart and Wal-Mart in the 1980s
  • When both companies decided to duke it out, K-Mart launched an all-out publicity campaign to raise public awareness of their store and Wal-Mart, without the funds to beat them, decided to focus on improving stocked shelf efficiency and immediate checkouts
  • Wal-Mart obliterated K-Marts sales in the U.S simply from good customer service and K-Mart had been struggling to keep up ever since

 

 

 

 Sources

 

 

Reactions
  • Epic (45%)
  • Lewd (24%)
  • Wat (16%)
  • Creepy (10%)
  • No (6%)

One thought on “15 Worst Business Decisions Ever

Comments are closed.