

Ask HN: Ethics of Offering Promotion for Users who Dump Competitor - dryicerx

I am weighing if this is a good business practice or not. For example, if a hypothetical start-up called ACME decided to waive the first year price for anyone who migrate their contents from a competitor site to the ACME site.<p>This seems like a very good way to make company enemies. But also a good way to gain market share.<p>Thoughts?
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cwan
How is this unethical? A friend of mine who happens to also be a lawyer
pointed out that it's impossible to "steal" a client. Clients act on their own
accord and in their interests. Seeking to take market share by directly
targeting competitors often just makes good business sense. I suspect it's
extraordinarily rare for survival of a company that needs to seek the approval
of its direct competitors anyway.

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RobGR
I don't think it is unethical. If they came back and offered all the
customer's who switched 2 years free to switch back, after you were out of
pocket for serving them for a year free, would you feel unfairly treated ?

Inducing people to break a contract seems to me to be going a step further,
but even then I would say it depends on the details. Inducing someone to break
an abusive cell phone or ISP contract doesn't bother me. Inducing someone to
break a maintainance contract with an individual, say an independent plumber,
would probably be wrong.

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joez
Depends on your market. I was recently at a talk from a Philip Morris
executive who said the only way for the cigarette business to gain market
share in its declining market was to win over consumers from competitors.

Doesn't sound unethical but are you ready for any backlash? Can you win a
price war?

