Synopsis02—Marketing Myopia

In this article, author Theodore Levitt provides basis for how to ensure continuous growth of a company. It also explains the misconception that marketing and selling a product is same thing. In actual both are different in spirit. And he also explores the major factors that have an impact on the growth opportunities for organizations. With the help of examples from different industries such as the railroads, the grocery stores, the petroleum industry, the automobile industry etc., he highlights these organizations were very myopic when it came to their marketing ideals. For example, the railroad industry declined to see itself as being a part of the transportation industry. Instead, it looked at itself being in just the railroad industry, hence not strategizing and adjusting for other transportation mediums that were being discovered. This narrow view or myopia ultimately led to its decline.
Besides, he also points out one common mistake by all these industries was they were product oriented and main emphasis was selling their product rather satisfying their customers’ needs. During the explanation of Theodore, sustained growth is dependent on how broadly you define your industry and how carefully you gauge your customer’s needs. Many giant companies of past now doesn’t exist because they wrongly defined there industry which led to stop their growth. This is one big point that executives of those big companies missed when identifying there industry. Many companies that failed to sustain their growth because they believed the following four conditions: 1. The belief that growth is assured by an expanding and more affluent population. 2. The belief that there is no competitive substitute for the industry’s major product. 3. Too much faith in mass production and in the advantages of rapidly declining unit costs as output