One of Jeff Bezos’ hallmarks in meetings is 
leaving an empty chair to represent the needs, wants, opinions, whims, and moods of the customer.
But while that strategy might work for a behemoth like Amazon, for the vast majority of “normal” businesses, it is exactly the WRONG strategy
Because somewhere in all of the customer catering and adjusting and customizing and personalizing done by Amazon and the other big online retailers...
Somewhere in the management canon where it reads that the "customer is always right...”
Somewhere in that so firmly held modern sense that customers are entitled to everything...
Somewhere in all this what has been lost is the consideration for the other side of the deal.
For the seller. For the operating business.
Because focusing too much on what customers think and feel can be a sad road to ruin for very many businesses.
Why?
Well, first of it all it can have us attempt the very unpleasant undertaking of morphing who we are and what we do to fit too wide a spectrum of customer types, budgetary capacity, and scope of need.
And it can tempt us to promise solutions and benefits that in our heart of hearts we know are impossible to deliver upon.
It can also cause us to dangerously reduce our prices.
While doing so might work for companies like Amazon with virtually unlimited financial resources and the ability / willingness to make almost zero margin on individual sales, the vast majority of normally sized businesses will almost always be harmed (sometimes severely) by "race to the bottom" price cutting.
And perhaps most profoundly, too much accommodating to customers makes business owners and executives feel bad.
About the value they bring and about the value they feel they deserve.
Now this word “deserve” is a loaded one because no one in modern business deserves anything.
So this feeling of “deserving it,” if not channeled properly, can easily result in a lot of very unproductive emotional anguish.
But with just a little re-framing, this feeling can be channeled into powerful fuel and motivation to “solve the riddle” of persuading customers to happily give us what we as entrepreneurs and executives feel we deserve.
Solving the riddle might involve marketing and sales and branding and pricing tricks, techniques, and "hacks."
And solving it certainly will involve providing our customers with SO MUCH fundamental and intrinsic value that they are thrilled to pay for it at a price where we earn a healthy profit.
Of course this is hard to do.
Customers, as is natural, will always try to get the best deal they possibly can so the burden will always be on us to get to true win-win.
Winning via deeply pleasing and serving customers with the value we provide.
And winning via having those same customers be thrilled to pay for and consume that value at the price and on the terms we request.
So enjoy Amazon as well all do as customers.
But don't try to be like them as a business.