The business of Levitt's Marketing Myopia

Theodore Levitt’s Marketing Myopia is a profound marketing article giving an astounding perspective of doing business.

Contents

What is Levitt’s Marketing Myopia?

The main objectives of this article are to refocus businesses on customer needs. Rather than the production of goods and services of a business. It also highlights a companies management need for a wider vision in their methodology to business to prevent myopia.

What is Levitt’s Marketing Myopia?

Marketing Myopia is the inward focus with an outlook of short-term gains, rather than the needs of the company and products/services from the perspective of customers’ wants and needs. We have seen the impact of innovation in markets obliterating seemingly stable companies and business models.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hw8FfogTUhU

Failed businesses investigated by Levitt

In his article, Levitt provides many examples of failed types of businesses, due to not clearly identifying their orientation. Railroads, grocery stores, Hollywood, petroleum, automobiles, electronics, and crude oil are some of the areas he focuses on. Railroads deteriorated due to their myopic orientation due to their product orientation, they should have been consumer-orientated and customer orientated. With a broader competitive outlook, they could have had a higher business accomplishment. The failure of Railroads business brought an argument from Barzun (1960). Barzun stated that what is lacking is the will of the company to sustain and to meet public satisfaction.

Dying growth industries built on mass production

Conditions that guarantee a dying ‘growth’ industry can be related to a focus on mass production, a build-it-and-they-will-buy approach. This disregards marketing the product to consumers, suggesting it is a compulsory consequence of a product. Taking a marketing focus on a product is advantageous. Selling a product revolves around the needs of the seller to convert products into cash, marketing revolves around the consumer’s needs fulfillment by the product (including creating, delivering, and consuming). The low-cost production of one product line does not guarantee the success of a product.

Free kerosene lamps impact on the petroleum industry

In China, free kerosene lamps resulted in a large population seemingly having the need for the product does not guarantee the petroleum industry being safe from obsolescence.

Ford’s mass marketing and consumer demand

Henry Ford, on the surface, may appear to be in favor of mass marketing; however, it was a result of his marketing strategy focusing on consumers. Ford realized consumer demand for his product at the pricing level of $500 would sell millions of his vehicles (Ford, H 1923).

Solving a customers product

A product can become to provincialism in its approach to business. This can be seen in the petroleum industry where they are preoccupied with oil exploration production and refining. They do not look beyond their narrow business scope, into the transport industry where consumers may purchase products that run on electricity and green natural products. Consumers purchase this product for the sole purpose to drive their transport.

Competitors from outside the industry

Competitors external from their industry may create products that satisfy consumers’ needs. However, there are dangers of being too wary of competitors with research and development of your own industry. This can be seen in the electronic fields, with management being top-heavy with engineers and scientists, who prefer research and development of products than satisfying their prospective ‘uncontrollable’ consumers.

Marketing that focuses on consumers is paramount

Levitt’s Marketing Myopia also believes that businesses should be consumer-orientated, not product orientated. To do this management must have a leader driven by an aspiration to succeed, focus on producing products that satisfy consumers, and the chief executive is accountable for setting all the company’s style/direction/goals. Whilst all industry illustrations provided were large-scale industries, Levitt’s article is visionary as it gives any marketer a wider vision to conducting successful business.

Focusing on the consumer is paramount; without them in this highly competitive business world, there would be no need to create products, price them, promote them, or place them. Understanding an industry requires a broader outlook on their field mitigating and preventing competitors from acquiring their consumers and lead to more opportunities.

Reference list:

Barzun, J 1942, Trains and the Mind of Man, Holiday, p.21

Ford,H 1923, “My Life and Work”, Doubleday, Page and Company, New York, pp. 146-147.

Levitt, T 1960, MARKETING MYOPIA, Harvard Business Review, 38, 4, pp. 45-56, Business Source Complete, EBSCOhost, viewed 16 September 2012.