Marketing Myopia Definition, Example and Explanation | Theodore C. Levitt Theory of Marketing

Myopic, as the word itself has its meaning short sightedness . Marketing Myopia is an interesting as well as very  important concept introduced by US marketing academician Ted Levitt for marketing management. According to him,  most of the organizations  are not able to reach their potential and pave the way for their fall because of their myopic approach. which is  short sighted and self centered , they only focus on their firm or organization and its items/products in terms of their  so called aim of  fulfilling customer’s needs and wants. This concept was first discussed  by Theodore C. Levitt  in the article “Marketing Myopia” published in Harvard Business Review in 1960.

What he emphasized in this article was that companies should view the marketing from customers  point of view not from their  point of view. According to him “Sustained growth depends on how broadly you define your business—and how carefully you gauge your customers’ needs.” “Marketing Myopia” is the quintessential big hit HBR piece of all time. In it, Theodore Levitt, who was then a lecturer in business administration at the Harvard Business School, introduced the famous question, “What business are you really in?” .

He gave a emphatic example of  the firm and organization in the business of  railroads. As per his Myopic marketing theory this business did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. It is  in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the rail-roads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.

What he wanted to convey to  the organizations, was that they  must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as buying customers, as doing the things that will make people want to do business with them.

Related Posts

  • Share/Bookmark

Leave a Reply

  

  

  

You can use these HTML tags

<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>