Marketing Myopia Essay

This essay provides a critical analysis of Theodore Levitt's article, "Marketing Myopia." The author summarizes Levitt's central argument: businesses should prioritize understanding and meeting customer needs, rather than solely focusing on selling products. The essay agrees with Levitt's assertion that a lack of customer focus leads to long-term failure, highlighting the importance of adapting to market changes and competition. While acknowledging the strengths of Levitt's arguments, the essay also points out a weakness: the oversimplification of the railroad industry's decline. Overall, the essay concludes that Levitt's insights remain highly relevant in today's dynamic business environment, emphasizing the need for businesses to adopt a customer-centric approach to ensure long-term success.

Critical analysis of the article: Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt
In this article, the author has written that the companies emphasize on the selling their products,
and not the marketing which is a big mistake that is conducted by them. In the selling concept,
the companies focus on the seller’s needs and in the concept of marketing, the concentration is
on the needs of buyer. The main idea that is propagated in the article is that the industry is a
process of satisfying the customers, and it is not a process of producing the goods. So, the
progress of the business depends on the fact that they concentrate on the needs of the customers
and not on selling the products. So, this concept is explained by defining the ‘marketing myopia’
which means the failure or the short-sighted vision of the top management of the company in
defining the purpose of the company in consideration of the functions performed by it from the
point of view of the consumers i.e. they do not assess the needs of the customers and they just
focus on enhancing their products.
I agree with the ideas of the author because the companies focus on refining their products and
they face downfall in the long run. Their vision is not related to the satisfaction of the customers,
but they just focus on development of their product and enhancing their product. This is a wrong
practice because it is the responsibility of the businesses to satisfy and fulfill the needs of the
people.
The ideas of the author are relevant today because there are many substitutes of products
available in the market. If the companies keep on producing more and more and they do not
realize that the substitutes can wipe out their huge production, then they cannot survive in the
market for long time. Therefore, the top management must develop a vision for satisfying the
customers and meeting their needs rather than selling their products.
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The strength of the arguments of the author is that he argues that the growth of the industries get
slow down because they believe that the expansion in the size of population will help them in
growing, they cannot get competition from the substitutes and mass production will reduce their
costs and increase profits. All these are myths by the businesses and these are the major believes
that led to the downfall of the companies.
The weakness of the arguments of the author is he mentioned the concept of marketing myopia
as completely flawless which is ambiguous. For example, the example of railroads is not relevant
completely. He said that the railroads failed because the management was not capable of
defining its purpose and it did not fail because of introduction of the other facilities of
transportation. So, this logic was ambiguous.
In my opinion, the article has value and it is relevant to apply to the business in the current
environment because the changing environment demands the vision and the ideologies of the
business to change too.
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Reference:
Levitt, T. (1960). Marketing myopia. Harvard business review, 38(4), 24-47.
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