Read the passage carefully and answer the following question.

There’s barely a product or service on the market today that customers can’t buy from someone else for about the same price, about the same quality, about the same level of service, and about the same features. If you truly have a first-mover’s advantage, it’s probably lost in a matter of months. If you offer something truly novel, someone else will soon come up with something similar and maybe even better. But if you ask most businesses why their customers are their customers, most will tell you it’s because of superior quality, features, price, or service. In other words, most companies have no clue why their customers are their customers. This is a fascinating realization. If companies don’t know why their customers are their customers, odds are good that they don’t know why their employees are their employees either. If most companies don’t really know why their customers are their customers or why their employees are their employees, then how do they know how to attract more employees and encourage loyalty among those they already have? The reality is that most businesses today are making decisions based on a set of incomplete or, worse, completely flawed assumptions about what’s driving their business. There are only two ways to influence human behaviour: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it. When I mention manipulation, this is not necessarily pejorative; it’s a very common and fairly benign tactic. In fact, many of us have been doing it since we were young. “I’ll be your best friend” is the highly effective negotiating tactic employed by generations of children to obtain something they want from a peer. And as any child who has ever handed over candy hoping for a new best friend will tell you, it works. From business to politics, manipulation runs rampant in all forms of sales and marketing. Typical manipulations include: dropping the price; running a promotion; using fear, peer pressure, or aspirational messages; and promising innovation to influence behavior—be it a purchase, a vote, or support. When companies or organisations do not have a clear sense of why their customers are their customers, they tend to rely on a disproportionate number of manipulations to get what they need, and for a good reason, manipulations work.