Marketing Myopia Summary

Md. Jahidur Rahim ID: 11164035

Marketing Myopia The first thing that Theodore Levit does in his article “marketing myopia” is denying the title of forever growth industry to any industry that ever existed and claimed to be so. He believes every industry has been a growth industry at some point of time, but they could not carry the tag along because of several reasons and none of the reasons being saturation in market. Industries failed to continue their growth because of lack of proper management. They did not realize the need of expanding into sectors adjacent to which they are already working. Railways limited themselves to rail transports and did not cover the other modes of transportation. There are many other such examples listed by Levit in his article. The major mistake of these industries was being product or service oriented, where they should have been customer oriented. To keep the growth wagon rolling, they were required to modify their services in accordance with the market needs. Fateful purpose An industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process. Businesses will be better positioned for growth if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on the mass production and selling techniques of their products. Error of analysis The error is to consider the specific product or service to be concentrated to growth not the total industries. For ultimate sustain and growth a marketer it must needs to customer service and market orientation. The final motto is to satisfy the customer by fulfilling the needs. Shadow of obsolescence For each and every company it may face the approach of extinction by the business environment and market force diversification.

Dry Cleaning The industries was the most newly invented and service oriented business in the market but it face some shadow of obsolescence due to new invention what make this industries more useless to the customers. Customers have totally new and best alternatives to meet their needs. Electric Utilities The industries of electric utilities also faces the same problem for new and dynamic changes in uses and production of its. By time changes the electronic utilities are changing very rapidly and with the entire change customers are also habituated to use new and convenient utilities. As a result the specific product oriented companies are facing the state of obsolescence. Grocery Store For the newly introduction of huge super chain shops and hyper market the grocery shops of our neighbor locality may also face to loss its business. First time the grocery shop owner think that those supermarkets will not at their competition and not comes at their market but they were wrong. Self-deceiving cycle This is the cycle that own self is cause for the total myopic view of the company. This cycle is regarding some conditions. Self-deceiving cycle has four conditions. 1. Growth is due to increase in population. 2. Believing that there will be no substituent for any major product. 3. Mass production and declining unit cost for output increase. 4. Concern with a single product development. The belief that increasing customers will increase your business have a negative impact as you will yourself not bother to expand your business. The petroleum industry thinks that there is no competitor as there is no substitute of oil but many refineries have such huge stock of oil that they can be a threat.

Population Myth Population Myth belief that rise in population will increase the demand with its own force. It does not necessarily mean rise in the demand of what a particular industry is offering. Sometimes some other product may take over in demand because of unknown reasons. Petroleum industry made a wise decision by not sticking to the petrol products. They rather expanded to complete crude oil products to save themselves from the descent.

Asking for trouble

Asking for Trouble In other words, the industry’s efforts have focused on improving the efficiency of getting and making its product, not really on improving the generic product or its marketing. Moreover, its chief product has continuously been defined in the narrowest possible terms namely gasoline not energy, fuel, or transportation. This attitude has helped assure that. Major improvements in gasoline quality tend not to originate in the oil industry. Also, the development of superior alternative fuel comes from outside the oil industry, as will be shown later. Major innovations in automobile fuel marketing are originated by small new oil companies that are not primarily preoccupied with production or refining. These are the companies that have been responsible for the rapidly expanding multi pump gasoline stations, with their successful emphasis on large and clean layouts, rapid and efficient driveway service, and quality gasoline at low prices. Thus, the oil industry is asking for trouble from outsiders. Sooner or later, in this land of hungry inventors and entrepreneurs, a threat is sure to come Idea of indispensability The belief that there is no competitive substitute to the industry’s major product would be a huge mistake by the management. Here too, writer carries forward the example of petroleum industry. The industry had to shift focus several times because of inventions that did not even come from the same industry. Kerosene in lamps was left behind with the invention of electric bulbs heating system was snatched away by the coal industry. Perils of petroleum These perils are the probable happening of total industries disaster or downsizing of petroleum industries and its related complementary industries for the causes of uncertain availability of natural petroleum in the nature. But it is a great miracle that this peril still never happened in this industry. All the time at the edge of the peril there another resources of natural petroleum is available to the market. Uncertain future Any company cannot give a guarantee that they will not extinct and can continue the business with their own strategy and process. If they fail to introduce the new market and consumer oriented product or services then another competitor will do something what may causes for the myopic company’s extinction.

Production Pressure

Mass production was assumed as the way of reach mass people with low price product and a tool for good marketing. At a primary stage of the mass production worked some time but by the time this tool is not working any more with alone. Now a day’s customers need be more individually treated. That’s why to be a truly marketers it needs to creates value satisfaction with their service and product. Lag in Detroit Detroit was not very much concentrated about their customer’s choice. They were developing only their product with the economy of scale approach for the price effectively. That were cause for them loss in business and loss the market, both existing and emerging. What Ford put first Ford was highly concentrated with production orientation. They produced huge amount with their full production capacity and with this strategy they were able to provide low price car in the market. And as a result that was worked. Ford earned a huge amount of revenue from the market. But that was a myopic decision indeed. Product Provincialism The growth of a company is depending of the company’s focuses on the market and its customers. But the company which are not so customer oriented they are much more concern about their product development and production they might be fall in low growth and loss the market for low concern about the customers need and demand in the market. A product provincialism company is encircling within their products and services. Creative Destruction It is the process of creating new value to the customers by innovating new product or services instead of existing one what is not really liked by the customers. This mostly happened in the petroleum industries that are tried to introduce a new customer liked product for growth of the industries. Danger if R&D The companies do not focus on the customer’s needs but they continuously try to do R&D. Paying too much attention to R&D without other factors considerations is a cause of dangers. High-tech products management becomes top-heavy with engineers. Products themselves become the primary focus in marketing.

Marketing short-changed

Companies are investing and concentrating on creating superior product with best effort but they are not highly customer oriented that cannot meet fully a customer’s needs. This type companies think customer will accept what they provided to the customers and that ideas are not worthy. Stepchild treatment This situation happens in some specific industries. Petroleum industry is one of them. In the petroleum industry all the industrial activities are more or less related with search, operations but marketing activities are very few sometime not at all are done. This situation is treated as the stepchild treatment. Beginning and end The industries are actually not for the making of product and its developing with high concern. Industries are for meet the customer’s needs fulfillment with every related concern. Product and service developments and other things are a part of the industrial activities. To realize the market and its environment first to realize what customer need and how the needs can be satisfy with best product and service. Conclusion Thus, in conclusion we see that companies or industries have a myopic attitude towards their business, largely due to the fact that they are oblivious of future trends of their resources. This is especially so, because the pressure on resources comes not from their own industry but related ones. However, the dependence of these companies on related sectors is grossly overlooked by top management. What is more is that, as we have seen, competition comes from sectors that might seem totally unrelated to the business in question. In case of efficiency of the energy saving appliances an imminent threat came from an already existing sector architecture, which till then seemed completely unrelated to energy saving. To counter such threats top management has no choice but to think “out-of-the-box”. New developments in upcoming industries must be thoroughly analyzed and their impact upon one’s own business must be thought of. This kind of knowledge comes by “engaging with the world” in an innovative way. The advantage obtained by giving more than a passing look to sectors or industries that might seem completely unrelated is immense. Allow the others to lead. Err on the side of excessive interaction and communications among members of the project team. As the project’s deliverable takes shape, forge a direct link between the project team and people in day-to-day operations”. The authors essentially put forward the same idea so as not to fall into the trap of thinking that one’s own business/product is invincible and that it can stand or progress with no dependence on any other business/product, however remote the relation might seem. If top management chooses to remain isolated from the knowledge that exchanges hands within seconds in the world, it leads to them being myopic about their own businesses. The vicious

cycle of faith in a permanent market share, over-obsession with their own product and the false aura of invincibility of the product starts, and corporate management lose out more and more failing to keep pace with the rapidly changing world. This spells doom in the long run.