Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Submitted To
Submitted by
M. MANNAN RAHIM
Marketing Myopia
Myopia the literal meaning is the short sightedness. Marketing Myopia is the shortsightedness of managers or we can put it this way that marketing myopia is failure of top management to define their business and meet customer needs that can result in the failure of product or company. It is an approach where only short range goals are considered or company focuses only on few aspects rather than an industry as a whole. Levitt has cited lots of examples from different sectors/industries from the railroad, petroleum, automobile, movie, and electronics markets, dry cleaners, to buggy manufacturers to put his case before the world that firms have placed so much importance on their product and mass production, as he suggested to adapt a broader, more flexible class of product. Levitt presented four main conditions which could lead to this failure:
Example
Vespas Scooter all around the world have gradually declined to maintain the position they used to have in the past. Thinking that we are in the scooter industry rather than in automobile. Company did try to make changes in the product but overall looks, built and quality remained the same. They did not focus on technological aspects of this particular brand. They still cost you around 25,000 PKR.
They couldnt observe the coming competition from other competitors in Pakistani market e.g. Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki. And Suzuki, all these companies worked on the technological aspects.
Another example is when Coca Cola tried to change their drink's flavor. Because of the competition by Pepsi, Coca Cola thought that the market will find it exciting to taste a new Coca Cola. In doing so, mass complaints torrented Coca Cola. Because of the failure of Coca Cola to consider that their target market includes people who wanted change in flavor and people who still prefer the original Coca Cola flavor, and by trying to replace the original flavor Coca Cola, they lost the other portion of their market, which is the people who would still prefer the old flavor. The portion of the market Coca Cola had lost was substantial, such that the company was forced to return back the original Coca Cola flavor to be distributed in the market. Suppose people have cockroaches in their homes and you produce the cockroachs killer, so you consider yourself as anti-cockroach manufacturing company, then youre goal shouldnt be selling the anti-cockroach killer only; rather it should be getting rid of the all the insects from the houses. Just selling your anti-cockroach is myopic thinking. If you just keep on selling cockroach killer you might make profit in the first but thinking should be getting rid of cockroaches from homes this way you would be making high profit and attracting customers. And if you dont think like that, someone else will and there may be others coming with new ways of not even letting those cockroaches enter your house and that can ruin your business of anti-cockroach. So, you need to be aware of those facts and broaden your thinking and strategies. These examples could help us understand the concept of marketing Myopia by T Levitt.
Levitts paper on Marketing Myopia was important as it caused the business world to take notice, as it is related to industries/different sectors consideration of consumers and survival of the firms. It is of immense important not lose sight of the fact that all stakeholders should be involved in the decisions, and these decisions should not be limited to only customer. In the current situation the problems of marketing have shifted from "Marketing Myopia" to "Marketing deluge". Rapid developments in the technologies, rapid development in demographic profile, strategic geographical profiles, changing peoples expectations have reduced the visibility of the organizations. Organizations/industries must change the lens through which they look at their stakeholders not just customers.
List of references http://hbr.org/2004/07/marketing-myopia/ Levitt, T. (2004, July-August), Marketing Myopia, Harvard Business Review Top Line Growth, 138-149 http://blogs.hbr.org/2011/07/marketing-myopia-50-years-on/ http://hbr.org/2007/07/if-brands-are-built-over-years-why-are-they-managedover-quarters/ar/1 Lodish, L.M., Mela, C.F. (July-August, 2004), If Brands are Built over
Years, Why are They Managed over Quarters?, Harvard Business Review
http://journals.ama.org/doi/abs/10.1509/jppm.29.1.4 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1336886