Marketing Myopia, first described in an article by Theodore Levitt in the Harvard Business Review, is a short-sighted, inward-looking marketing approach that focuses on meeting the company’s immediate needs rather than focusing on marketing from the consumer’s point of view.
When a company focuses more on sales than on marketing or consumer needs, that’s when marketing myopia arises.
What is Marketing Myopia?
Marketing myopia or marketing myopia is a situation when a company has a narrow-minded approach to marketing and focuses on only one aspect of the many possible attributes of marketing.
For example, a brand that focuses on developing high-quality products for a customer base that ignores quality and focuses solely on price is a classic example of marketing myopia.
When Does Marketing Myopia Hit?
Marketing myopia arises when short-term marketing goals are more important than long-term goals. Some examples are:
- Focus more on sales than building customer relationships
- Predict growth without doing proper research.
- Mass production without knowing the demand.
- Focus on only one aspect of a marketing attribute without focusing on what the customer really wants
- Not changing with the dynamic consumer environment
Business, according to Levitt, is actually an institution that satisfies customers and therefore must be based on customer needs and wants .
The Cycle of Self-Deception
Growth in business is never guaranteed. The business environment is always changing and should be the main thing that must be considered in business. Businesses that do not assess their own capabilities, competitors, customer needs, and changing trends are always likely to get caught up in the Self-Deceiving Cycle.
Conditions That Cause a Self-Deceiving Cycle
- The belief that business growth is guaranteed by population growth.
- The belief that there are no competitive substitutes for the company’s products
- Supply creates its own demand, hence mass production.
- Overestimate product quality without doing scientific research.
If you ever thought there would be no problems in the future, there may be problems in your thinking.
Step-Child Treatment
Businesses often treat their products as their own children and customer needs as Step-Child Treatment. This results in business owners spending most of their resources on developing their products and the remaining resources (less or no) on research and marketing.
This backfired on the business as the stepdaughter always turned into the Cinderella of the story.
Example of Marketing Myopia
Here are some companies that suffer or suffer from marketing myopia
- Kodak lost most of its parts from Sony cameras when the digital camera exploded and Kodak didn’t plan to.
- Nokia lost its market share to android and iOS.
- Hollywood doesn’t even take advantage of the television market because it only focuses on movies.
- Yahoo (worth $100 billion dollars in 2000) lost to Google and was bought by Verizon for approx. $5 billion (2016).
Possible Future of Marketing Myopia
- Dry cleaners – New types of fibers and chemicals will reduce the demand for dry cleaners.
- Conventional stores – The shift to a digital lifestyle will make conventional stores disappear.
How to Avoid Marketing Myopia
The simplest way to avoid marketing myopia is to focus on what the market really wants.
As Theodore Levitt himself said, “people don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.” There are more than a few things that might help:
- Have a clear vision. How can this product or service make a difference now and in the future?
- Put the customer before the product. Customer or market-oriented companies describe the problems their products solve, not the features they have.
- Do the marketing first. People throughout history have figured out how to make a product, then figure out how to sell it later. The Wak doyok brand is a great example. The more successful companies determine what people want beforehand, then produce it.
- Don’t stop marketing. It is important to continue market research even after the product launch. Find out what people like, dislike, and want to see in the next iteration.
- Do the competition. Competing brands represent some of the most relevant expertise in an industry, which makes them both a threat and a resource. Learn from their failures and successes, while working to stay one step ahead.
- Diversify your product or service. Don’t just fulfill one need – find ways to address related customer wants, and your offering will become more complete.
- Do an experiment. Disruptive innovation is very risky, but it is also the only way to meet needs in new ways. As Sally Hogshead put it, “It’s good to be better, but it’s better to be different.”