The Cult of Stickiness is also alive and well in Europe. It's a nice strategy while they're held hostage, but it really puts a damper on customer-retention rates once they eventually escape. Stickiness achieved through direct attempts to control user behavior is often as annoying and misguided as the pop-up window purgatory of porn sites. Depending on how lucrative your flies are, this can be even more detrimental to the health of your e-business. Today you could argue that GeoCities is something of an albatross around its neck.
Public libraries are a great place to gather and read books, but they all lose money.
Analysts attribute a great deal of this success to the store layout, which efficiently shuttles shoppers through a racetrack design that assumes consumers spend less time browsing. The moral of the story is to never confuse the means with the ends, whether sticky or slippery. Stickiness might seem like a good idea, but in the end all businesses are held accountable to their operating incomes. Stickiness for stickiness' sake is worthless unless it is somehow tied to that principle. Another lesson is that every business, and every customer base, is different.