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Marketing Management

Submitted To

SIR HASSAN RAZA

Submitted by

M. MANNAN RAHIM

Critique on marketing Myopia

Date: 24 September, 2013

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:

Factors that lead to Marketing Myopia


The thinking that market expands only when more and more people buy the products. The perception that there are no substitutes for industrys major products. Being product oriented rather than being customer oriented. Lack of experimentation Lack of improvement in product/service and cost reduction.

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.

Criticism on Marketing Myopia


Levitts article was written ages ago, so keeping in view the business environment it covered lots of valid points, so if we look at current situation marketing myopia still exists but its face is bit different. Most of the times changes made by organizations were because of the authoritative pressure, if a company gets too much profitable then it does not feel to retain or maintain the customers. Today we can have organization that are myopic and those four components presented by Levitt, e.g. faith in mass production, believing that there is no substitute for the major products of the company. Because the challenges of organization of tis era are different. Industries like mobile and television, food show that having myopic vision can lead to failure in this era of challenges. The attitude that if we will produce more and produce it in batter quality everything could be sold, it remained till 20th century. Levitt interpreted his idea in a very limited way, as the challenges at that time may be were of small scale, in order to be successful in todays business environment all the stakeholder including internal and external customers, but suppliers, and users be involved to make sure that we are developing in the right direction. This argument was presented in an article by Smith, Drum wright, and Gentile (2010) which stated that firms and marketers have taken Levitts position to far, and that there has been little focus on the requirement that the firm consider multiple stakeholders beyond the consumer (Smith, p. 6). Smiths article suggests that marketers make an effort to 1) identify the applicable and important stakeholders are to a firm, and 2) incorporate appropriate feedback regarding expectations and issues within the firms decision making process as it relates to product development and marketing. Although article was written long ago, but the world now is facing gazillions of issues related marketing myopia and some dont go in the favor of marketing myopia. We can take the example of petroleum sector. Levitt suggested that the oil companies had a single thought on expansion and growth through doubling consumers that purchased more products. At present oil companies continue to take a product-based approach, defining them as being in the business of selling petrol or gas. They are making big money with their product based approach, they are ignoring growth and just relying on the longevity of the product, however they know that future is in alternative source of energy.

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

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