Marketing Myopia

It has been republished a number of times since then. The publication that’s critique is based on is from the Best of HUB series, in the July-August edition of the Harvard Businesswomen (pages 138-149). N Levity’s article, he explores and details issues he saw with big business’ short-sightedness (I. E. “myopia”) and failure to adopt a broader consideration of external factors in their corporate strategies,including the neglect to valuate the needs and wants of the consumer. This inattention has resulted and surfeiting in the collapse of long-established firms.

Levity uses examples from many industries including railroad, petroleum, automobile, movie, and electronics markets, along with other references to greengrocery’s, dry cleaners, and buggy whip manufacturers to develop his case that firms have placed too incompetence on their product and selling it, as opposed to adapting a broader, more flexible classification of their purpose and offerings.

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Levity presented four main conditions which could lead to this failure:”- 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 major product;-3. Too much faith in mass production and in the advantages of rapidly declining unit costs astronauts rises;-4. Preoccupation with a product that lends itself to carefully controlled scientific{activities}. ” (Levity, p. 40)Levity argued that firms’ strategies should evolve with the consumer, paying more attention to gastrointestinal to and marketing to consumers instead of blindly selling o them, and exercise the foresight to sweat new innovative services or products may be lurking on the horizon that could be taken advantage of to benefit both the individual firm and the market as a whole This article makes a number of valid points about big industry, keeping in mind that it was written over arrears ago.

Even today, a number of large firms appear to have a myopic vision of their place in their respective markets and their futures. Today, there is short-sightedness present as it relates to monitoring gathering valuable information from global consumers, appliers, and competitors (Oldies & Meal,2007), and in the failure to take a long- term focus on company strategy, marketing, and brand management(Doze, Santos, & Williamson, 2004). Marketing myopia still exists, but it is presenting a different face.

For the most part, changes or improvements made within large industries were a result of pressure or direction from government, regulatory bodies, or as a response to conditions which significantly threatened firm’s existence. If a company was or is very successful in a market where it doesn’t have to make monochrome to lid or retain customers, an air of complacency can set in if managers are not careful, interpretation of future threats and/or opportunities can be neglected. A number of today’s industries appear to me to have continued to exhibit components of the four conditions presented by Levity.

Today, the examples of challenged industries has changed from those in the sass’s – now, mobile phones, gourmet coffee (Doze, 2004), and flat panel television industries (Oldies,2007) show how myopic Marketing Myopia By koshering 7 growth of populations in the “western world”, and advancements in developing entries had been assumed to be an ever-increasing source of dependent customers who will provide a steady revenuer’s for big business. Firms with global reach need to take advantage of their expanse and use flirtatiousness’s to learn new and innovative ideas that may not be present in their local market.

As stated by Doze(p. 6), “{companies} must choose to engage with the world; otherwise it will engage us. “The attitude that “if you build more of it and make it better, they will buy it” continued to exist to the ended the 20th century. Expanding economies of scale and technological improvements were being targeted towel average reduction costs, without due consideration for the customer. Levity may have been somewhat limited in his interpretation of the current state of big business at the time. N order for a firm to be successful in the market, especially today’s global environment, all blameworthiness’s, not only the consumer, need to be involved, consulted, and called upon to ensure that the firm’s developing appropriately in the areas of customer needs, environmental responsibility, characterizations, and ethics, to name a few. This argument was presented in an article by Smith, Outright,and Gentile (2010) which stated that firms and arresters have taken Levity’s position to far, and that “Theresa been little focus on the requirement that the firm consider multiple stakeholders beyond the consumer”(Smith, p. ). Smith’s article suggests that marketers make an effort to 1) identify the applicable intimidation stakeholders are to a firm, and 2) incorporate appropriate feedback regarding expectations indicates within the firm’s decision making process as it relates to product development and marketing. Continued success of a firm needs to be based on sound decisions made with the use of oversimplifications from all pertinent sources, and not Just one body (I. . Consumers).

Theodore Levity’s paper on “Marketing Myopia” was important as it appeared to cause the business world take notice as it relates to industries’ view of consumers and their importance to the survival of a firm. Through good examples at the time, the author shows that simply having an internal focus on pushing invincible and untouchable product out to customers without their input will not support existence over Othello term. It is also important to not lose sight of the fact that all stakeholders need to be involved in business decisions, and not be limited to solely a customer focus.