Customer-side CEOs in particular are growing increasingly fed up with the apparent black arts of IT operations that require larger and larger budgets without predictably delivering more and more business value.
Fighting words from the new chief executive of Victoria's Secret Direct--meaning, the mail-order side of Victoria--wants to increase its appeal to an upscale customer who now feels more comfortable buying La Perla or Wolford lingerie.
In essence, Groupon is claiming that its massive expenditures on marketing and related customer-acquisition costs are a one-time thing, a side effect of creating an entirely new market.
In these cases and a million more like them, it seems that some cost-cutter has counted all the beans on the corporate side and none on the customer side.