Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt spawned a legion of loyal partisans for years after it was published. However, I feel that it has outlived its use and relevance.

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Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt spawned a legion of loyal partisans for years after it was published. However, I feel that it has outlived its use and relevance. Furthermore, I find that the author made a few assumptions which do not seem to stand the test of modern management experience, thus rendering it of little value for the marketing student of the 21st century. The velocity of change in industry structures, platforms of competition and rise and demise of companies and industries defy all traditional logic.  

In Marketing Myopia, Theodore Levitt proposes that industries should define themselves broadly. This practice allows them to retain flexibility as well as to never lose sight of the basic customer need that their product is fulfilling, which in turn will lead to them developing and changing their product to better suit the needs of the customer. An example he gives is one of the buggy whip industry. If they had defined themselves broadly as being in the transportation industry, or even as providing a ‘stimulant or catalyst to an energy source’ they would have survived since they would have changed their product.

The author’s focus is on the long term changes- not on product development but on product change. In this article, Levitt proposes that companies fail to successfully maneuver market transitions because they have a myopic view of the scope of their business. With reference to the railroad industry, he notes, “The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was because they were railroad-oriented instead of transportation-oriented; they were product-oriented instead of customer-oriented.” This article stresses the importance of beginning with ultimate objectives rather than with operational goals. Take the example of K Mart. It tried to define itself as a full service retail chain catering to the entire gamut of needs of the customer. In Levitt’s view this would have been a customer-oriented definition of its scope of services. “Why would a customer need to go anywhere else if all her needs were fulfilled under one roof?” But it collapsed on account of cut throat competition from a stronger discount chain, Walmart. On the other hand niche retail companies like Home Depot and Toys r Us continue to flourish. They survived because of clear focus and specialized services and not because of defining themselves in a wider context of the customer’s needs.

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Every product has a product life- cycle. This is defined in our marketing textbook as the stages a new product goes through in the marketplace: introduction, growth, maturity, and decline. When the product reaches its decline stage (or perhaps it is brought to its decline stage by,) another product is ready to take its place. The new product fulfills the same customer need, only more efficiently. Levitt reminds management to not get complacent since their product too will be replaced. His recommendation is to always keep an eye on the bottom-line which is how to fulfill the customer’s need better, ...

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