What did you get out of reading this article?
In ‘Marketing Myopia’ many companies and businesses mistakenly have a narrow minded approach to marketing, only considering it as a way of selling their product. Instead, he argued that companies should look at marketing from the consumer’s point of view. For example, a company that sells hiking boots should not define its marketing in terms of sales of hiking boots, but market itself as a company concerned with outdoor exploration and adventure. Levitt believed that products should be viewed as a consequence of marketing rather than marketing being a necessary consequence of a product. Again, the focus should be on filling customer needs through goods and services rather than creating goods and services and then attempting to find customers. A business will showcase marketing myopia when a business views marketing as specifically a way of selling their product, rather than from the standpoint of fulfilling customer needs. If you view marketing from the broader perspective of fulfilling customer needs, you will be able to adapt to changes in the market. On the other hand, if you take the myopic view that marketing is only selling products to customers, your company may die when the product falls out of favor in the marketplace.
What was the result of the railroad industry not defining its industry correctly?
The Railroad industries growth halted as they chose product over customer. This is a result of them defining their industry to be in the railroad business opposed to the transportation business. In other words the industry was focusing on the wrong area, they were concentrating on a product instead of being customer orientated. The article suggests the railroad industry should have targeted developing further in the area of transportation for people and not focusing solely on products, this would have created greater opportunity for a constant expansion of the industry for many years.
In Levitt’s article what did the oil industry continue to do and what was its
consequence?
The oil industry did not look to develop and grow as an industry and look at gas as an alternative, this is a result of all the focus being put on oil, and they only saw gas as a mineral that would deplete the oil industry. Oil companies soon fell behind when some oil executives explored the gas industry by themselves, it is now a multi billion-dollar industry and the way of the future.
What are the implications of this article to sport in general and to sport
marketing industry in particular?
With relation to sport, ‘Marketing Myopia’ has significant relevance. In most cases, if a sport as a product remains the same for a long enough period of time customers will lose interest. The sport must continue to develop as an industry and appeal to the customers to ensure a continual growth. Many sports have evolved through rule changes, some through equipment development, and a few even purely based on entertainment value. Many of these changes are to improve spectators enjoyment of the game, but the over riding reason being the appeal to customers rather than staying focused on the product (marketing myopia). Look at it this way, rugby union has changed its scrum call from ‘crouch…touch…pause…engage’ to ‘crouch…bind…set’ In the hope that it would speed up the game and create better viewing for the customers watching the game. Also the technology being used in sports like tennis and cricket has been set in place to continue the growth of the two sports, the ‘hawk eye’ systems being used are to reduce human error and create more fair and entertaining games. Cricket is a great example of targeting costumers rather than the product, cricket was doing fine as sport in its test match format, but for this interest to continue they had to keep developing, they did this with the introduction of the one day format (a shortened version of the game). Even still cricket went the extra step and created a game largely focused at customers for entertainment, ‘twenty20’ cricket. It has been a huge success and cricket viewing is at an all time high.
Ruaridh Mackenzie 