How companies should treat their most enthusiastic customers

THE hero of Nick Hornby’s novel, “High Fidelity”, cannot get enough of vinyl records. By day Rob Fleming runs a record shop where he spends his time sampling the stock and constructing fantasy compilations with his equally obsessive assistants. By night he moons over his favourite songs. “Is it so wrong, wanting to be at home with your record collection?” he asks himself. “There’s a whole world in here, a nicer, dirtier, more violent, more peaceful, more colourful, sleazier, more dangerous, more loving world than the world I live in.”