This is what happens when you have incompetence at the corporate level. The people running the business don't really know the lure behind their product and who their customer base is.
I wouldn't say incompetence per se, just lack of understanding of the specifics of the market and what and how and why their products get bought, which is kind of what you're saying but not quite. I'm pretty sure every single GW business decision over the last few years must have looked good on the face of it in the light of conventional business school wisdom.
Take, for instance, the alleged, rumoured instance where some GW high-up said off the record (or wherever he did, don't remember) that their key customers are those with household incomes over £70,000 (or some such number). I'm sure that guy and his MBA-bros were taught at business school to look at who's actually buying the product and focus on the key customers. I could imagine that, indeed, a very significant part of GW sales are to a small, disproportionately high-spending subset of the player base. It certainly fits the demographics at my local gaming club. Yet, if the gaming club wouldn't exist, with its less-spending players and all, I doubt those high-spenders would have been involved enough to give GW their money to such an extent.