Marketing Myopia

Marketing Myopia

Submitted by Ojasvi Razdan (92557)

In his article, Levitt (1960) defines marketing myopia as a short-sighted and inward looking approach to marketing that focuses on the needs of the company instead of defining the company and its products in terms of the customers’ needs and wants.  It results in the failure to see and adjust to the rapid changes in the company’s market and customer base. The article talks about how businesses suffer from marketing myopia as they view marketing strictly from the standpoint of selling a specific product rather than from the standpoint of fulfilling customer needs.

During the development phase, every industry can be considered a growth industry, based on the apparent superiority of its product. However, it has been seen, many industries fallen under the shadow of mismanagement. This does not happen because the product looses its charm. The cause of the downfall is that the energies are put in selling the product that focuses on the needs of the seller, while marketing that concentrates on the needs of the buyer is completely ignored. What usually gets emphasized is selling, not marketing.

In this article, Theodore Levitt argues that “the history of every dead and dying ‘growth’ industry shows a self-deceiving cycle of prolific expansion and undetected decay.” But, as he illustrates, memories are short. The railroads serve as an example of an industry whose failure to grow is due to a limited market view. Those behind the railroads are in trouble not because the need for passenger transportation has declined or even because that need has been filled by cars, airplanes, and other modes of transport. Rather, the industry is failing because those behind it assumed they were in the railroad business rather than the transportation business. They were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented, product oriented instead of customer oriented.