Intuition and marketing texts make the importance of customer satisfaction to marketers pretty obvious. Customer dissatisfaction is similarly considered to be obviously bad news. However, there can be instances where dissatisfaction serves a purpose and could even be engineered.
A short while ago there was some analysis undertaken by Neil Cybart about the storage that Apple provides for its smart phones. The assessment was that the 16GB memory option may make the range seem affordable to customers (a lower headline price), but the 16GB option was also supposed to encourage the realisation amongst customers that it was not adequate for their needs. As a result in year two these people would migrate to the 64GB version, which may be more than adequate for their needs.
“While some may say this discussion of purposely limiting storage capacities to help maintain profitability is anti-consumer and a money grab, observers need to look at this process as a bit more than just greed. ”
That this is not a new idea is reflected in the comment made by Oliver (1997, p9), he goes on to cite a General Motors executive who is supposed to have said that the company's corporate mission was the 'organised creation of dissatisfaction'.
“one purpose of new products is to create dissatisfaction with the prevailing style, a common strategy of automobile companies through the release of new models”