Date post: | 02-Jan-2016 |
Category: |
Documents |
Upload: | roland-hendriks |
View: | 20 times |
Download: | 1 times |
Marketing Myopiaby Theodore LevittGroup No.8:Alex ElwoodNikolas FosterBlake OverallShaelee PittengerLorelei Wilson
What is Myopia
•Nearsightedness--not inherited. It can be prevented.
•Short sighted and inward looking approach to marketing that focuses on the needs of the firm instead of defining the firm and its products in terms of the customers' needs and wants.
• Read more: http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/marketing-myopia.html#ixzz0yyuoieyC
Theodore Levitt
• Started a newspaper with Erma Bombeck in elementary school
• Served in World War II• After the war, Ted was a reporter and
sportswriter for the Dayton Journal Herald• Received his masters in economics from Ohio
State• Worked briefly as a consultant in the oil
industry• Began teaching at Harvard in 1959• Wrote Marketing Myopia in 1960, most
reprints of any Harvard Business Review article, 900,000
Levitt cont.• Wrote 25 articles for the Harvard Business
Review• Authored 8 books on Marketing• 1983 wrote “Globalization of Markets” – coined
the word globalization• In 1985 became the editor of the Harvard
Business Review, expanded it’s readership beyond an academic journal into a mass market management magazine
• Won many awards• “What business are you really in?” – Marketing
Myopia• Approach was not to get approval in research,
but to have “important people in important companies” (his phrase) to take his ideas and go with them
“There is no such thing as a growth industry, what we have is growth opportunities.”-Theodore Levitt
Guarantee a Self-Deceiving Cycle•Believe growth is guaranteed by an
expanding population
•Believe there is no competitive substitutes
•Have too much faith in mass production
•Preoccupation with a product: focus on product instead of customer
Assured Growth by Expansion
•Belief that increases in population and affluence ensure growth
•Lack of innovation – A common characteristic▫Companies focus on efficiency, not
innovation•Petroleum industry
▫A prime example of this fallacy▫Reinforces Levitt’s caution of myopically
defining one’s industry
No Threat of Obsolescence•The fallacy of believing competitive
substitutes don’t exist•Petroleum industry
▫A history of obsolete products due to competitive substitutes Kerosene Lamp Kerosene Space Heater
Mass Production
•Lower product’s unit costs as output increases
•Focus on production, neglect marketing
•Selling is not marketing
•Focus on company’s needs, not customer’s needs
Henry FordBrilliant Marketer Senseless Marketer
• Created a product customer’s needed
• Created a product customer’s could afford
• Created production system to fit market needs
• Refused to make cars in any other color but black
Preoccupation with Product
•Industry declines instead of growing
•Example – Oil Companies
•Survival entails change
Creative Destruction•When something new eliminates
something old•Must become innovative – reinvent
business•Must change business strategy to
survive
Marketing Myopia Today
•Airline Industry- Southwest Airlines vs. American Airlines▫- Customer satisfaction low in this industry▫- Airlines vs. Cable T.V : Tie▫- IRS ranked higher than airlines in
customer satisfaction
Marketing Myopia Today
•Technology Industry▫More focused on the customer today than
in 1960▫Apple▫E-commerce and E-Business ranked high in
customer satisfaction report
http://www.theacsi.org/images/stories/ACSI_TREE_08_10.pdf
The Pros
•Provided for new thought process
•Customer Centric
•The concept stands the test of time
•Marketing is not selling
The Cons
•Can a company realistically restructure•Can go outside the scope of bounded
rationality (lose reality)•Static not dynamic
▫Does not factor for globalization▫Ecommerce
Conclusion
•“Organizations 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 it.”
Theodore Levitt
Reference• Levitt, T. (1960). Marketing myopia. Harvard Business
Review, 38(4), 45-56. • Lavelle Louise (2006). Theodore Levitt Dead at 81. Business
Week. Retrieved September 10, 2010 from www.businessweek.com.
• McDermott, Anne (2010). Customer Satisfaction-Airlines Worse than IRS, Better than Facebook. FareCompare.com. Retrieved September 8, 2010 from http://www.farecompare.com/articles/airline-industry-news/customer-satisfaction-airlines-irs-facebook/
• Dictionary, (2010). Creative destruction. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/creative+destruction
• Wikipedia, (2010). Creative destruction. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creative_destruction