Originally posted by AfterPentax I think that is not what a corporation does. If imaging seems to be a drain on the corporation, which means it lowers the dividend for the shareholders, than there is every reason to cut it out. First they will make shure whether it is imaging under Ricoh or Pentax brand or both. If they established that and they are sure that it is not possible making the brand or division working more efficient then they will cut out the brand that leads to losses or the whole division. Ricoh is not a philantropic institute, it is there to make profits and raise the shareholders value. That is how it works in business.
For the most part, it is true that everything companies do is aimed at profit and most things in the corporate world are judged on that basis.
However, that is not always the case. For example, companies will often have "Halo" products that may or may not add much, if any, direct profit to the overall picture, but exist to create or enhance the image the company wants to convey.
Mazda MX-5's are this sort of product as are Corvettes. Both probably do make some money, but are by no means mainstream and if they were to be judged solely upon revenue/profit contribution to he total, they would likely be axed.
Companies also sometimes have to be in certain markets to show customers that they offer a complete solution.
Where I work, we spent quite a bit of time and expense developing the products, expertise and experience to add a related service to our offerings. This area was very complementary to our core businesses, but as it turned out, took a whole lot more effort and returned much less profit than the other services we offer.
We took a hard look at cutting it altogether, but since our competition offered this service and our customers wanted a complete solution, we made the choice to scale the service back to the minimum we could offer and still keep the customers happy. The other aspect was that this work often led to other, related work that our competitor would get if we did not offer it.
The bottom line (pun again intended
) is that business is often not solely focused upon profit of a given product or division.