...Marketing Strategies by Theodore Levitt Group No.5 : Rajdeep Laha Anay Halder Sabyasachi Bhattacharya Bipul Purkait Faculty : DR. Abhijeet Biswas Theodore Levitt (1925-2006) • Born in Vollmerz, GERMANY in 1925 • Came to the U.S in 1940 & settled in Dayton, Ohio • Started a newspaper with Erma Bombeck in elementary school • Received his masters in economics from Ohio State in 1951 • Taught at Harvard from 1959-1990 • Wrote Marketing Myopia in 1960, most reprints of any Harvard Business Review article, 900,000 Levitt cont. • Wrote 25 articles for the Harvard Business Review • Authored 8 books on Marketing • 1983 wrote “Globalization of Markets” – coined the word globalization • In 1985 became the editor of the Harvard Business Review, expanded it’s readership beyond an academic journal into a mass market management magazine • Won many awards • “What business are you really in?” – Marketing Myopia • Approach was not to get approval in research, but to have “important people in important companies” (his phrase) to take his ideas and go with them Some philosophies by LEVITT • Theodore Levitt exhorted executives to put their customers at the center of all they do–and to put marketing at the center of strategy. • Levitt wove a powerful argument that companies should stop defining themselves by what they produced and instead reorient themselves toward customer needs and satisfaction. What is Marketing Myopia • Shortsightedness--not inherited. It can be prevented...
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...Marketing Myopia, Journal Article 1 Sylvia DeSormeau Marketing Management, MKT 308 Rob Koonce, Instructor May 1, 2009 "Marketing Myopia" is an article published in the Harvard Business Review originally in 1960. The very fact that it is still being used as a teaching tool in a marketing class in 2009 speaks volumes for the article's central message, that top executives must define their industries correctly. It seems simple enough, and yet Levitt supplies the reader with many examples of industries that have either given up profitable opportunities or simply drowned in a sea of red due to their industry classification. Industry classification errors do not occur because top management believes that it operates in a different field than it actually does, per se. Rather, Levitt drives home the point that most successful companies identify themselves to be a part of larger industries. This concept is at the heart of Levitt's article. Rather than defining one's industry to be "the street car industry" or "the railroad industry," companies would be much more successful if they thought of themselves as being in "the transportation industry." After all, most of the time technology evolves but the needs to be fulfilled remain the same. Another cause of marketing myopia is what Levitt calls the "idea of indispensability." This concept is embodied by many industries, including the petroleum industry. For instance, Levitt speaks of the gas revolution that posed a threat on the...
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...Marketing Myopia, is it Relevant Today? Marketing Myopia by Theodor Levitt was published in 1960. In the article he discusses that every industry is a growth industry and that growth does not decline or stop because the market is saturated, it does so because of a failure of management. According to the article, an industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process. Businesses will be more successful in the end if they concentrate on meeting consumers’ needs rather than on selling products. To illustrate his point Levitt uses several examples (Digital Marketing, 2010) His first example is of the decline of growth in the railroad industry. Railroads did not decline because needs were filled by cars, trucks, planes or telephones. They declined because they failed to meet their customers’ needs. Railroad executives assumed themselves to be in the railroad business and not in the transportation business. They declined not because of cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones, but because of their own myopia (Levitt, 1960). The next example that Levitt uses is that of Hollywood. Hollywood barely escaped being totally wiped out by television. All of the established film companies went through drastic reorganization or disappeared. Similar to the railroads Hollywood forgot that they were in the entertainment business and operated as those they were just in the movie business. Instead of embracing television as an opportunity they viewed it as a threat...
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...Theodore Levitt's Marketing Myopia ABSTRACT, Theodore Levitt criticizes John Kenneth Galbraith's view of advertising as artificial want creation, contending that its selling focus on the product fails to appreciate the marketing focus on the consumer. But Levitt himself not only ends up endorsing selling; he fails to confront the fact that the marketing to our most pervasive needs that he advocates really represents a sophisticated form of selling. He avoids facing this by the fiction that marketing is concerned only with the material level of existence, and absolves marketing of serious involvement in the level of meaning through the relativization of all meanings as personal preferences. The irony is that this itself reflects a particular view of meaning, a modern commercial one, so that it is this vision of life that Levitt's marketing is really SELLING. Golin Grant corporation. If such an expectation sounds fanciful, this may be more indicative of enthusiasm in Levitt's promotion of marketing, than of a misreading of his intent. While he does acknowledge that the marketing orientation has to be balanced by other more traditional selfinterests of the corporation,^ when he lauds the virtues of marketing itself, this note of realism is difficult to detect. The irony is that Levitt's enthusiasm for the marketing mode discloses precisely the tactics and influences that are of concern to critics of marketing, and especially of the advertising portion...
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...Critique on Marketing Myopia | Submitted by: Husnain Moazzam | Submitted by: Sir Hassan | Critique on Marketing Myopia Theodore Levitt was a lecturer in Business Administration at the Harvard Business School; now, he is a full-fledged professor. The Harvard Business Review has sold more than half a million reprints of this article and each reprint has no doubt been copied several times over. There will be few marketing students who have not read this article which is about how an organization can guarantee its sustained growth a big question? To quote from the summing up of this article, Marketing Myopia answered that question mark in a new demanding way by urging organizations to define their business broadly to take privilege of development opportunities. Using the example of the railroads, Levitt showed how they declined as technology highly developed since they define themselves too narrowly. To continue growing, companies must ascertain and act on their customers' needs and desires, and not bank on the presumptive longevity of their products. Even more dramatic is the first paragraph of this seminal article which reads: “Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others which are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case the reason for growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the...
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...“Selling and marketing are antithetical rather than synonymous or even complementary. There will always be, one can assume, a need for some selling. But the aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself.” (Drucker 1973, pp.64-65) In the early years of the ‘70s era, Drucker was one of the first educators and authors who identify marketing as a way to understand customers’ needs rather than to sell the products. With the same thinking as Drucker, in a journal article named Marketing Myopia (1960), Theodore Levitt examines and analyzes limitations of managers in approaching the philosophy of modern business. The core of this article is to criticize myopic visions of managers who always pay attention to their selling targets as well as their firms’ without perceiving that the most crucial goal in business is to satisfy customers, not to sell products. In order to illustrate his view, Levitt (1960) take the railroad industry as a typical example for the failure in its business at that time. In this case, he points his finger on the railroads’ disorientation as the main culprit in making their customers to use others such as cars, trucks, airplanes and even telephones instead of being royal travelers to the old traditional transportation. In other words, the railroads killed their business by themselves because they determined their industry in a wrong mind...
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...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...
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...Thoughts of Management Gurus Case Analysis On MARKETING MYOPIA By Theodore Levitt Introduction Marketing myopia is a term used in marketing as well as the title of an important marketing paper written by Theodore Levitt. This paper was first published in 1960 in the Harvard Business Review; a journal of which he was an editor. One of the most important marketing papers ever written was that on ‘Marketing Myopia’ by Theodore Levitt. Some commentators have even gone as far as to suggest that its publication marked the beginning of the modern marketing movement in general. Its theme was that the vision of most organizations was constricted in terms of what they, too narrowly, saw as the business they were in. It exhorted CEOs to re-examine their corporate vision; and redefine their markets in terms of wider perspectives. Myopia means short-sightedness and Levitt claims most failures of firms are due to short-sighted lack of vision in top management. His view of marketing is long-range vision, anticipation of change, and planning for the future. There are numbers of companies and whole industries that went bankrupt or nearly failed due to lack of vision. It was successful in its impact because it was, as with all of Levitt's work, essentially practical and pragmatic. Organizations found that they had been missing opportunities which were plain to see once they adopted the wider view. The impact of the paper was indeed dramatic...
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...Marketing Myopia - Critique Marketing Myopia is an article written in 1960 by Theodore Levitt. Levitt was a marketing professor at Harvard who has published many articles on the subject. This article; however, is no doubt his claim to fame as it has been extremely well read over the years. This is due in large part to the consumer oriented approach to marketing that he argues for. Though common knowledge to the marketers of today, making the customer the first priority in business would have been easily overlooked during this era of production, selling, and basic marketing approaches to business. This contends that the businesses of the day are extremely short-sighted when it comes to the true focus and associated advantages of marketing. He illustrates that a firm’s inability to elaborate on their given industry will result in lack of readiness towards competition and other threats when they arise. Failure to broaden the scope of said firm may result is a lack of innovation Thus, in conclusion we see that companies or industries have a myopic outlook 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. What is more is that, as we have seen, competition comes from sectors that might seem totally unrelated to the business in question. New developments in upcoming industries must be thoroughly analyzed and...
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...[pic] Division of Communication, Marketing and Public Relations MODULE ASSESSMENT MK4111 International Marketing Management Assignment 1 Part A A Contemporary Issue Format: Essay Participation type: Individual Length: 2,500 words (+/-10%) Value: 50% of the final grade Learning Outcome: 1 & 2 Release Date: October, 2015 Submission date: 11.59pm Monday 4th January 2016 Submit to: Blackboard Return Date: by Monday 27h January 2016 Objectives and Learning Outcomes • For you to demonstrate that you are able to: 1. Critically assess International Marketing Strategy, within the framework of the International Marketing paradigm 2. Collect, analyse and critically review evidence relating to international marketing and to produce soundly reasoned arguments, conclusions and recommendations (Learning Outcome2). Task • Research and write an answer to the following question: Durkin (2013) re-visits the classic paper by Theodore Levitt “Marketing Myopia” from the 1960’s. He suggests that in the digital marketing of today that marketers have lost their way, focusing too narrowly on what the technology can do, rather than on customer needs; thus following a similar pattern to that of the preceding technologies of digital marketing. Marketers risk losing market orientation and building those important relationships with their customers: they should therefore consider wider definitions of their markets determined by a customer focus rather than a narrow...
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...WEEK 1 – CASE STUDY: THE KEY MARKETING STRATEGY OF NIKE Nike is considered to be a leading athletic footwear manufacturer, which makes up over 30 percent and 50 percent of global and US market share respectively. In order to reach customers’ demands and get profits, Nike has executed/implemented a number of marketing strategies. This essay will examine Nike’s key strategies from1962 to 2009. The most essential marketing strategy called “Pyramid of influence” was expressed by Product, Place and Promotion strategies throughout targeting on athletes, sportsmen and sports loving consumers. Product (product variety, design, quality) Nike provided high quality running shoes designed for athletes by athletes with competitive prices in comparison to imported shoes. Afterwards, Nike has expanded and designed more various products according to other types of sports such as basket ball (shoes), soccer (sneakers), tennis (clothing and gears) and Golf (golfers’ dresses). Furthermore, Nike's commitment to designing innovative footwear for serious athletes helped it built a cult following among U.S. consumers. Place: (including locations and channels) The first targeting market of Nike’s sport shoes was domestic market (US) and got ideal success with running shoes. They then expanded their markets overseas to Europe from 1994 with soccer’s clothing and then Asia (China targeted) in 2008 with the role of athletes’ sponsor. Moreover, Nike formed a partnership with Foot Clocker to create...
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...Wang (Nancy) Title: Marketing Myopia Author: Theodore Levitt Year: 2004 Source: Levitt, T. (2004) Marketing Myopia, Harvard Business Review, Jul-Aug, pp138-149; originally published in Harvard Business Review, July/Aug. 1960, pp. 45-56. Insight：Interesting Readability: a little hard to read Relevance: good practice Overall: 7.5 Key Content: The article focus on trade will get successful when they cater for customers’ demands rather than selling their products for clients. The effective corporate management is very essential for development of companies. Some firms’ business stopped growing because of failing business management, such as incorrect business orientation and purposes, concrete matters. The article showed that petroleum industry makes its business get success because improved manufacture oil product’s efficiency, products innovation and gas and oil transmission, in particular, developed domestic central-heating system to compete with rivalry. Also pointed that the car industry’s ford company through saving its product costs to reduce its cars price to meet more customers’ demands to purchase its cars and increase industry profits. Therefore, for pursuing enterprise business success, corporations must pay attention to customer creating and customer-satisfy organism through a powerful leadership. Learning / Reflection: In the article, successful company leader utilize marketing questions’ “where...
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...Marketing Myopia The Myopic culture, would pave the way for a business to fail, due to the short-sighted mind-set and illusion that a firm is in a so-called 'growth industry'. This belief leads to complacency and a loss of sight of what customers want. - Theodore Levitt . Marketing Myopia suggests that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products. Some commentators suggested that it was the beginning of the modern marketing movement. Hollywood barely escaped being totally ravished by television. Actually, all the established film companies went through drastic reorganizations. Some simply disappeared. All of them got into trouble not because of TV’s inroads but because of their own myopia. As with the railroads, Hollywood defined its business incorrectly. It thought it was in the movie business when it was actually in the entertainment business. “Movies” implied a specific, limited product. Hollywood should have been more customer oriented than product oriented. Sustained growth depends on how broadly you define your business and how carefully you gauge your business. 3 Benefits … It helps companies find new products, services, new markets It helps companies find accurate competition It stops companies losing out when trends change We put the businesses at risk of obsolescence when we accept any of the following myths. Myth 1 :...
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...Marketing Myopia Marketing Myopia Marketing Myopia means means short-sightedness in a business. Introduction According to Levitt, (1960) “Marketing myopia means short sightedness, narrow view of marketing and its environment in a business”. This type of advertising plan does not have anything to do with the customer’s requirement; however the will of an organization is to sell specific product or services within the economic market, Osmand, (2003). It inclines a business to specialize in what it desires instead of what the shopper desires and tends to form a culture that's immune to modification, each usually end in a loss of name, a loss of business, and inefficient business practices Levitt, (1960)."Marketing Myopia" for a 1960 issued of the Harvard Business Review In this article, he planned that companies develop promoting near-sightedness as a result of they fail to question themselves often and infrequently assume they understand the solutions to such very important queries as "the kind of trade done?" its interrogation was taken for granted. Levitt prompt that these answers weren't obvious, which by exploring them, a business may additional adequately satisfying its customers’ needs and wants, thereby growing its business. It provides wonderful perspective on the mind of your client. Over forty years later, this essay continues to be relevant and perceptive, ripe with ideas regarding sales, marketing, and reinvention...
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...The speed of change in the digital economy • Marketing Myopia Page 1 of 2 The speed of change in the digital economy • Archive • RSS Marketing Myopia Many companies define themselves almost completely through the product or services they offer. This is a common approach that can seriously narrow the focus. Extensive attention on products rather than customers’ needs, create a “marketing myopia” resulting in business nearsightedness or shortsightedness. The most important question is therefore, “What business are we really in?” from the perspective of what customer want. What do people really want when they acquire a product or a service? This question directly impacts the strategy and the value proposition definition Companies need to understand the difference between a product and a commodity: • A product is what customer feels about your business • A commodity is anything for which there is a demand, but which is supplied without qualitative differentiation across a market Kodak is a great example in which marketing myopia was present. The digital camera was invented at Kodak in 1975. But instead of marketing the new technology, the company kept it under wraps for fear of hurting its lucrative film business. And when Kodak decided to get in the game it was too late. Kodak had the myopic view that the company was in the film business rather than the story telling business. But customers aren’t buying cameras and film as much as they are buying a record of their memories...
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