Managers are required to make many tough decisions over the course of a workday. One of the tough decisions a manager may be faced with is the decision to drop an existing customer from their portfolio.

Some companies refuse to drop customers (including non-profitable customers) in the hopes that these unprofitable customers will become profitable in the future.

Other companies do not want unprofitable customers impacting their bottom-line year after year and choose to drop them.

In your opinion, when should unprofitable customers be dropped (if at all)? Provide an example from a newspaper or other media sources from the past three months to support your argument.

The Harvard Business Review released a case study, included in our readings this week, on "When to Drop an Unprofitable Customer." You may choose to discuss this case analysis as part of your response; however it is not required.

Article

Kaplan, R. S. (2012, January). Case study: When to drop an unprofitable customer [Web log post].Retrieved from http://blogs.hbr.org/2012/01/case-study-when-to-drop-an-unp/