Introduction

Marketing myopia is the situation where an organization develops a narrow and short sighted

marketing approach focusing mainly on the interests of the organization rather than the other

possible marketing attributes. For say an organization might end up concentrating on the quality

of products and in the meantime ignore the actual demands of the customer. This paper

highlights the impact of marketing myopia suffered by Procter and Gamble in its coffee roasting

division- Splendid.

In 1992, Procter and Gamble’s coffee division Splendid suffered a great setback because of the

effects of marketing myopia. P&G owned an Italian coffee roasting company Splendid which

was a leading brand in the take home coffee market with excellent knowledge about the

production, marketing and distribution of Italian espresso coffee. The organization even had the

insights about the experience that the customers get while enjoying an espresso or cappuccino in

Italian Coffee bar but they viewed all this acumen narrowly. To adapt to the brand building and

skill management of the product, P&G even placed the American brew in Italian Market where

people preferred thick dark coffee. This myopic view in Italy and US and the inability to

accommodate innovation paved the way for Starbucks which was just a minute coffee roasting

company in Seattle. Starbucks gained all information about the technical know-how and

consumer behavior from Italy and combined it with retailing and fast food management

techniques from USA along with a thorough understanding of the American customers.

The impact of the marketing myopia was so huge that the whole market share moved from

Splendid to Starbucks and P&G had to sell Splendid to Phillip Morris’ Kraft General Food in

1992 due to their inability to accommodate the necessary technological and marketing changes
which Starbucks well accommodated. While focusing on the production and adaptation, P&G

ignored the customer demand which was well understood by Starbucks. If only the management

of P&G would have studied the market properly and used excellent retailing and marketing

skills, the company would have survived in the market. Understanding the ultimate consumers is

the most important aspect for a legendary business.

(https://iveybusinessjournal.com/publication/marketing-myopia-re-visited-why-every-company-

needs-to-learn-from-the-world/)

After creating a successful company and a superior quality product, the management was more

oriented towards the product rather than the consumers which led to such disastrous results. (

File 1- Article on Marketing Myopia page 9 Para 2 ). Sustained growth is a result of good

business definition along with careful examination of the needs of the people. The management

lacked the innovative knowledge blend to use their expertise according to the current

requirements of the people.

Conclusion

P&G’s coffee company Splendid had to suffer a huge setback leading to its discontinuance in

1992 because of the impact of marketing myopia. The inability to embrace the technological

changes in accordance with the customer demands led to the downfall of a once successful and

competent coffee company. They should have aligned the goals of the organization with the

marketing strategies while keeping in mind the consumer demands. Management ignored the

market trends and concentrated all their efforts on the product as a result of which they ended up

getting caught in the web of marketing myopia and found it difficult to survive.