In other words, companies should stop thinking about themselves based on product lines or traditional lines of business. Instead, companies should start thinking in terms of lines of customers. They talk of the lifetime value of a customer, implying that they want to lengthen relationships. But companies almost always stop well short of imagining how they could truly fit into their customers world. Instead, they think about how customers could fit into theirs.
Companies merely try to sell more of their existing products and services, over longer periods.
The answer is that car companies think that they are in the car business, not the insurance business. However, to the customer the car and the insurance are part of the same transaction. There is no longer any excuse for narrow thinking. The Internet makes it trivial for a car company to link up with an insurer. The car company would get a cut of each insurance transaction while making customers happier.