I am weighing if this is a good business practice or not. For example, if a hypothetical start-up called ACME decided to waive the first year price for anyone who migrate their contents from a competitor site to the ACME site.<p>This seems like a very good way to make company enemies. But also a good way to gain market share.<p>Thoughts?
How is this unethical? A friend of mine who happens to also be a lawyer pointed out that it's impossible to "steal" a client. Clients act on their own accord and in their interests. Seeking to take market share by directly targeting competitors often just makes good business sense. I suspect it's extraordinarily rare for survival of a company that needs to seek the approval of its direct competitors anyway.
I don't think it is unethical. If they came back and offered all the customer's who switched 2 years free to switch back, after you were out of pocket for serving them for a year free, would you feel unfairly treated ?<p>Inducing people to break a contract seems to me to be going a step further, but even then I would say it depends on the details. Inducing someone to break an abusive cell phone or ISP contract doesn't bother me. Inducing someone to break a maintainance contract with an individual, say an independent plumber, would probably be wrong.
Depends on your market. I was recently at a talk from a Philip Morris executive who said the only way for the cigarette business to gain market share in its declining market was to win over consumers from competitors.<p>Doesn't sound unethical but are you ready for any backlash? Can you win a price war?