"Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, calls his approach "customer obsessed." Everything is focused upon the requirements of Amazon's customers. The competition is ignored, the traditional marketing requirements are ignored. The focus is on simple, customer-driven questions: what do the customers want; how can their needs best be satisfied; what can be done better to enhance customer service and customer value? Focus on the customer, Bezos argues, and the rest takes care of itself. Many companies claim to aspire to this philosophy, but few are able to follow it. Usually it is only possible where the head of the company, the CEO, is also the founder. Once the company passes control to others, especially those who follow the traditional MBA dictum of putting profit above customer concerns, the story goes downhill. Profits may indeed increase in the short term, but eventually the product quality deteriorates to the point where customers desert. Quality only comes about by continual focus on, and attention to, the people who matter: customers."