Marketing Myopia is the failure to define an organization's purpose in terms of its function from the

consumers' point of view. For example, railway companies that define their markets in terms of trains, rather
than transportation, fail to recognize the challenge of competition from cars, airlines, and buses. It is
therefore necessary to define the needs of the consumer in more general terms rather than product-specific
terms.

Marketing Myopia is the short sighted look of the managers in wrongly identifying the category and goals of
the company, not looking at the whole industry of the product neglecting the fields of opportunities in their
area of industry, not listening to the customer's real

This article includes a one-page preview that quickly summarizes the key ideas
and provides an overview of how the concepts work in practice along with
suggestions for further reading.

At some point in its development, every industry can be considered a growth

industry, based on the apparent superiority of its product. But in case after case,
industries have fallen under the shadow of mismanagement. What usually gets
emphasized is selling, not marketing. This is a mistake, because selling focuses
on the needs of the seller, whereas marketing concentrates on the needs of the
buyer. In this widely quoted and anthologized article, first published in 1960,
Theodore Levitt argues that "the history of every dead and dying 'growth' industry
shows a self-deceiving cycle of bountiful expansion and undetected decay." But,
as he illustrates, memories are short. The railroads serve as an example of an
industry whose failure to grow is due to a limited market view. Those behind the
railroads are in trouble not because the need for passenger transportation has
declined or even because cars, airplanes, and other modes of transport have
filled that need. Rather, the industry is failing because those behind it assumed
they were in the railroad business rather than the transportation business. They
were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented, product oriented instead
of customer oriented. For companies to ensure continued evolution, they must
define their industries broadly to take advantage of growth opportunities. They
must ascertain and act on their customers' needs and desires, not bank on the
presumed longevity of their products. In short, the best way for a firm to be lucky
is to make its own luck. An organization must learn to think of itself not as
producing goods or services but as doing the things that will make people want to
do business with it. And in every case, the chief executive is responsible for
creating an environment that reflects this mission. am keen to know about
marketing myopia. What does this term exactly mean? Can you please give me
instances of marketing myopia in the Indian context? How does it impact a brand
and its position in the market? -- Ashutosh, on e.mail

Marketing Myopia was a seminal, epoch-making article written by Theodore Levitt;

originally printed in the Harvard Business Review (HBR). At the time of the
publication of this article, Theodore Levitt was a lecturer in Business Administration
at the Harvard Business School; now, he is a full-fledged professor. The Harvard
Business Review has sold more than half a million reprints of this article and each
reprint has no doubt been copied several times over.

Indeed, there must be very few students in India who have not read this article
which is about how a company can ensure its continued growth. To quote from the
summary of this article, (as published, in the HBR) Marketing Myopia answered that
question in a new challenging way by urging organisations to define their industries
broadly to take advantage of growth opportunities. Using the archetype of the
railroads, Levitt showed how they declined inevitably as technology advanced
because they defined themselves too narrowly. To continue growing, companies
must ascertain and act on their customers' needs and desires, and not bank on the
presumptive longevity of their products.

Even more dramatic is the first paragraph of this seminal article which reads: Every
major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of
growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others which are
thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every
case the reason for growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the
market is saturated; it is because there has been a failure of management.''

Marketing myopia is true for all companies who define their markets too narrowly,
including companies in India, who have defined markets in the '60s and '70s on the
basis of licensing production. Experience shows that when a business has redefined
its market, it has continued to grow as new targets are set. Perhaps the best
example is the recent one, where categories such as telephones, television, wireless
communication, cable television service providers, Internet, DTH and film producers
have all converged into a single category known as ICE, which is a combination of
information (and Internet), communication and entertainment categories.

The same is true of brands. Companies which segment a market using their own
yardsticks or price as a parameter, instead of defining markets from the consumers'
point of view, often suffer from a similar myopia. This results in the brand not being
able to exploit its full opportunity; and even prevents the brand from cracking open a
whole new market.

Take the detergents market, for example. It was myopia which prevented some of
the largest companies in the country such as Hindustan Lever and Tata from
developing a detergent powder which could convert the laundry soap user. The
preferred route, instead, was a detergent bar. While this was indeed a good strategy,
Nirma as a brand proved that laundry bar users could be converted to detergent
powder users, despite the fact that they had to change their washing habits. Time
and again, one finds that the manufacturer tends to segment the market when the
consumers perceives the market to be much larger.

Let us return to Theodore Levitt and his seminal article. When writing a retrospective
commentary of his article, he mentions that his original concept was often
misunderstood. It is worth quoting Theodore Levitt in full. Not everything has been
rosy. a lot of bizarre things have happened as a result of the article:

Some companies have developed, what I call marketing mania, they've become
obsessively responsive to every fleeting whim of the customer. Mass production
operations have been converted to approximations of job shops, with cost and price
consequences far exceeding the willingness of customers to buy the product.

Management has expanded product lines and added new lines of business without
first establishing adequate control systems to run more complex operations.

Marketing staffs have suddenly and rapidly expanded themselves and their research
budgets without either getting sufficient prior organisational support or, thereafter,
producing sufficient results.

Companies that are functionally organised have converted to product, brand or

market-based organisations with the expectation of instant and miraculous results.
The outcome has been ambiguity, frustration, confusion, corporate infighting, losses,
and finally a reversion to functional arrangements that only worsened the situation.

Companies have attempted to serve customers by creating complex and beautiful

efficient products or services, that buyers are either too risk-averse to adopt, or
incapable of learning how to employ. In effect, there are now stream shovels for
people who haven't yet learnt to use spades. This problem has happened repeatedly
in the so-called service industries (financial services, insurance, computer-based
services) and with American companies selling in less developed economies.

Marketing Myopia was not intended as analysis or even prescription; it was intended
as manifesto. It did not pretend to take a balanced position. This means that too
much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Marketing myopia does not prescribe being
myopic about marketing.