Will anything actually retain customers?

I don't think everyone knows that. Though the most loyal players, hardcore players tend to be the minority of the playerbase. Casual players make up the vast majority of almost any modern MMO.

If (just my opinion) they continue to listen to hardcore players and ignore their casual base I believe it will be at their continued peril.

I agree.

The small number of "loyal hardcore" raiders in the MMO community over rate themselves IMO. Particularly in the context of an MMO that was clearly made to cater to a broader more casual player base that loves SW IP.

nothing will retain me anymore. this game is 'broken'

and
There has been one new operation since the game launched. I don't think you can make a case for them listening to hardcore players.

Also, that casual player base that loves SW IP? Somewhere around a million of them stopped playing this game. Well, between 1.2M and 700k of them anyway.

The problem is, this game isn't catering to anybody. It is just taking people's money, making huge promises, and then not even trying to fulfill them.

It's like seeing a child at school who could do really well if they tried, but they just don't want to.

Wasted potential is just

Well...I feel that might be a narrow case example used to prove your point. That's not saying you can't be right, but I tend to think the evidence stands in what was done prior to and after launch. That includes all changes and additions, most of which (at least to me) were not asked for or desired by the casual community.

It is very difficult, IMO, for this game to satiate hardcore players with themepark content due to the VO design and it's development cost. I proposed a small solution for this, but I do think that they have to find some way to provide end game content that does not match the current VO requirement, or at least does so using mostly current assets.

But IMO they most definitely have to add repeatable "sandboxy" content for casual players, customization and the like. Casuals need things to do, endgame is rarely, in my experience, one of those things that holds casual players.

There has been little to no development on that end.

There is no endgame for anybody, and that is one of the problems. The most difficult part of the operations were the bugs, so that leaves hardcore raiders out. You can only do the dailies or flashpoints so many times before you start to drool on yourself, and PVP is stupidly repetitive in this game, with ever fight the same because everybody of each class has to spec the same way to be viable which means fights against the same classes are always the same.

That leaves no endgame for anybody, which is one of the problems. Then they claim that the game isn't suppose to have an endgame and everybody is suppose to roll alts. The problem with that is that the story quests might be different, but then EVERYTHING else to get to those story quests are exactly the same. So it isn't targeted at casual folks either.

Who is it targeted at and have they done anything at all to improve the game for their targeted demographic?

The bottom line is that if folks don't feel they are getting value for their $15 a month they will cancel their sub.
If the sub was $7.50 maybe folks would feel that they were getting better value?

All very true.
I would add that the Dailies are the same on 3 other Alts for me so after the second round with my Alt I am already on Ilum or Belsavis and bored out of my mind tired of the same ol same ol.

BioWare wants me to do Dailies with 4 Characters on 3 planets every day including Hard Mode Flash Points.
I can do this in 10 hours and by the third Alt I am sick of playing, but push through till done.

Also I see less and less people playing the game, numbers are going down and this game is dying.

Chalk it up to mismanagement, same thing that killed WAR.

Yes, games can still actually retain paying customers. It just requires the game to not suck, the devs to be very reactive to problems and proactive against causing problems, and management that aren't complete fracking imbeciles.