Chi Wai Lai
Business 103 Marketing
TA Section No. 021
10/5/2015
Note for Marketing Myopia
Theodore Levitt wrote “Marketing Myopia” and posted on an effective Harvard Business Review article in 1960. Marketing Myopia is a Marketing approach that states customers' needs and wants are the primary points to be focused on, rather than focusing on a product itself.
According to Jacques Barzun “I grieve to see the most advanced physical and social organization of the last century go down in shabby disgrace for lack of the same comprehensive imagination that built it up. [What is lacking is] the will of the companies to survive and to satisfy the public by inventiveness and skill.” In his point of view, we can understand why railroads business is going downward in the last century. The railroad was only sozzled on their advanced technologies of railroad, instead of looking for what need a customer wants. It is precisely the reason of being weaken.
- Many companies could not define what type of business that they actually are, either too broad or too narrow.
- Some companies especially the monopolistic have been too self-satisfied that leads them to fail in developing, even be replaced by other new competitors.
- Many companies have been too concentrated on gaining more profit by making and selling their products.
- Many companies have focused and have invested on researches and developments instead of marketing, which causes Marketing to become second primary of the company.
First of all, Levitt is trying to impose that the company executives not only become too wide or too narrow in determining their business and also new competitors slowly begin to build an empire. Those New competitors know what is missing in a big company mainly, and they know what they want. Making a business vision, mission and goals are necessary, but it might lead to disaster if these vision, mission and goals are not in the right direction. This will become a domino effect in a short period. If these VMG executives fail to define their business, then the executives will fail their business. Leavitt had mentioned an example in his article, Railway is not able to own "transportation" industry; film industry has not been determined itself as “entertainment business
Second of all, the big companies especially the monopolistic are too complacent with their superior product that they completely disregard by the fact that there are many other smaller competitors or people who are slowly looking for ways to be able to produce something that will eventually give more consumer-satisfaction, thus big companies will be replaced.
Third of all, the mass production is a priority through because of the company believes that the lower cost and ample production will generate more profit for them. However, they do not realize that while they may produce more and spending low, they are losing the marketing. The company did not see the importance of marketing because of selling is the primary job in their eyes, so they have put all the investment of production. These companies do not realize that marketing is where consumers are. Leavitt stressed that this is more important to focus on customer satisfaction, as it would be more helpful in the long run.