I am convinced that successful organizations are customer driven. These organizations identify the various market segments they want to compete in and determine what they must do to be successful. There are at least three customer categories for a journal. The first category is the subscribers of the journal. A journal must satisfy their need to have access to the latest developments in their fields, or eventually shrivel to extinction.
Subscribers also provide the revenue for journal operations.
The second category is the authors, the providers of the raw material for the journal. Without good material the journal will not satisfy the subscribers. Journals provide a service to authors by publishing their papers and enabling them to gain visibility, respectability, and even promotion. The third category is the academic performance evaluators. Journals provide a quality screen on the articles they receive and, depending on the academic respectability of the journal, provide a measure of article quality useful in evaluating the performance of authors.