The Right to Refuse Service

In general, companies attempt to take all comers.  You could argue that is borne of a sense of fairness to provide service to all people equally, or you could argue that it is borne of a sense of greed to grab as much money as possible, but in either case the results are the same: the firm attempts to serve as many customers as possible, and in doing so makes its products cheap and generic.   I have the sense that's not always a good thing.

I raised the point in a previous meditation that there is an implicit abandonment in market segmentation - that choosing to cater to the specific needs and interests of a narrowly defined a brand to neglect to serve the needs and interests of the broader market (and vice versa).    But there are also instances in which exclusion is neither passive nor implicit, but a deliberate choice.

It's particularly evident in the luxury segment: a luxury brand does not offer itself cheaply to anyone who wants it, but uses price and distribution as barriers to ensure that its product is only in the hands of a selected elite few.   To have its product in the hands of everyone is to diminish its esteem and its significance as a market of social distinction.   That is to say that when the lower ranks of society begin to adopt a brand, it loses its appeal to the upper ranks.

This is not merely (or perhaps "not only") a matter of snobbishness, but it may in fact be in the interest of customers for firms to refuse service to some individuals who wish to do business with it.   Consider the number of insurance companies that refused to write policies to homeowners in Florida because the state placed strict limits on the premiums they could charge.   To national companies, this meant that they would need to raise the difference between premiums and benefits in Florida by charging higher rates for coverage in states that are not prone to natural disasters - on effect, making people in areas that are not disaster-prone to subsidize the cost of insurance for people who reside in areas that are prone to disaster.  In this sense,  adopting a "take all comers" approach would be decidedly unfair.

There are also instances in which firms choose, or are compelled by law, to discriminate against certain customers.   A responsible firm would not, for example, sell alcohol to children or firearms to a convicted felon on parole.  I don't expect that there could be a rational and acceptable counter-argument to their right, and even responsibility, to refuse service to certain customers.

I do expect that such instances are rare, and that most instances in which firms purposefully choose to exclude certain groups of people represent an unwarranted prejudice - but that does not mean that all instances of refusing service are unwarranted or based on arbitrary or unjust criteria.  In some instances, it may be a good idea, for the efficiency of the firm, the esteem of the brand, and even the interests of the customers themselves for firms to identify segments of the market that the company should refuse to serve.