A Refresher on Marketing Myopia (CP, Chapters 1-2)

Question 1

What is marketing myopia?

Answer 1

• Nearsighted focus on selling products and services, rather than seeing the “big picture” of what consumers really want
  — lack of insight into what a business is doing for its customers
  — so much time, effort ad money invested into the present causes blindness to the future
• Causes large majority (75-95%) of project launches to fail within a year of their launch
• Business leaders think that they’re a “growth industry”, which doesn’t actually exist
  — instead, they’re only companies continuously capitalizing on growth opportunities

Question 2

Where did the term “marketing myopia” originate?

Answer 2

• Term coined by Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt in a 1960s article
• Article details
  — companies are too focused on producing goods or services and don’t spend enough time trying to understand what their customers want or need
  — encouraged switch from production-oriented business to consumer-oriented business
  — reminded CEOs that marketing is part of their job because they have a customer

Question 3

2 examples of marketing myopia

Answer 3

• Railroad lines
  — fell into steep decline because they thought they were in the train business rather than the transportation business
  — illustrates the concept that your product is not your business
  — maybe could’ve expanded business to cars, trucks or planes
  — unfortunately, they let other companies seize those opportunities and steal their passengers
• Blackberry
  — collapsed when iPhone launched by Apple
  — lost sight of how the market was changing
  — wanted to keep making their keyboard phones and ignored potential and desire for touchscreens

Question 4

Cure for marketing myopia

Answer 4

• Leaders should ask themselves: “What business are we really in?” and “What are we really doing for customers?”
• Successful companies focus on customer needs, not their own products and services
• Products and services can be replaced by competitive alternatives, either made by their own company, or made by existing/potential competitors

Question 5

Marketing myopia today (publishing and IBM)

Answer 5

• Publishing industry
  — customers want to be entertained, informed, stimulated by people (authors) more interesting than their friends, family or acquaintances
  — the word “publish” is a production-oriented take on the industry
• IBM Interactive Experience
  — IBM’s consultancy combines analytics, design and technology
  — brings in $2 billion in revenue
  — goal is to think past what they produce and say “we’re not in the business of information processing, we’re delivering the communications that are valued by consumers”

Question 6

How has marketing myopia evolved?

Answer 6

• Concept stayed in tact over the last 50-plus years
  — idea has become the foundation of modern marketing

Question 7

The New Marketing Myopia

Answer 7

• Paper published by Craig Smith at INSEAD, Minette Drumwright at UT Austin, and Mark Gentile at Babson
• People taking Levitt’s advice to an extreme
  — creating a new kind of short sightedness on the customer, and blocking out multiple stakeholders
  — instead of not focusing on the customer, this is only focusing on the customer
• Pitfalls of Levitt’s original idea
  — if corporations viewed as a customer-creating and customer-satisfying organism, then it puts too much trust in the consumer
• Levitt originally said that listening to customers is extremely difficult
  — new article takes this further:
  — it’s not just about listening to customers, but about hearing all the stakeholders who contribute to the company’s success
  — includes employers, suppliers, shareholders, competitors, media, and community members

Question 8

Industry challenges

Answer 8

• Concept of industries challenged over last decade
• Industry a company is in now may not be the one it’s in a year from now
  — fluid
• Disruptions constantly challenge industry stability
  — ex) programmatic ad buying
  — applying technology to ad targeting frees technology from particular industries
  — recognizes that the product will change and the medium will change
  — only constant is the consumer need they fill

Question 9

Example of company that avoided marketing myopia

Answer 9

• Uber
  — made many model changes based on customer needs
  — strong market sensing processes
  — acknowledgment that they’re in the transportation business, not the ride-sharing business