Article Review of Marketing Myopia

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FACULTY BUSINESS ECONOMIC AND ACCOUNTING

BA32503 PENGURUSAN PRODUK DAN JENAMA ANTARABANGSA

ARTICLE REVIEW OF MARKETING MYOPIA

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Article Review of Marketing Myopia

“Marketing Myopia” is the article that written by Theodore Levitt for the Harvard Business Review in 1960. This article was focusing on five main point that generally discussed about strategy as it is about marketing, but it also introduced the most influential marketing idea of the past half century: that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers' needs rather than on selling products. In this article, Levitt argued that many companies incorrectly take a shortsighted approach to marketing, viewing it as merely a tool for selling products. So, he argued that companies should look at marketing from the consumer's point of view.

        The first main point is Fateful Purposes where writer discuss about the failure of a company was come from the top. This is because in the writer opinion, the executives responsible for it, in the last analysis, are those who deal with broad aims and policies. The first example that use in this main point is the railroads. The reason that make the railroad stop growing is because of the railroad themselves not because of the need of customer declined or the need was filled by other competitor such as car, trucks, airplane and even telephone. They let others take customer away because they assumed themselves to be in railroad business rather than in the transportation business. This show that they define their industry incorrectly that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented which mean they were product oriented instead of customer oriented. Same as Hollywood who barely escaped being totally ravished by television. Actually, all the established film companies went through drastic reorganizations and some of them was actually disappeared. All of them got into trouble not because of TV’s inroad but because of their own myopia. From this main point, writer what a thoroughly customer oriented management can do to keep a growth industry growing, even after the obvious opportunities have been exhausted. The writer also argued that the lacking of company is the will of the companies to survive and to satisfy the public by inventiveness and skill.

        The second main point is Shadow of Obsolescence. Based on this main point, writer want to show that it is impossible to mention a single major industry that did not at one time qualify for the magic appellation of "growth industry". In each case, the industry's assumed strength lay in the apparently unchallenged superiority of its product because appeared to be no effective substitute for it. Yet one after another of these celebrated industries has come under a shadow. The writer explained it by using some example such as dry cleaning, electric utilities, grocery stores and a self-deceiving cycle. Back then, dry cleaning was once a growth industry with higher outcome. In an era of popularity of wool garments, dry cleaning was very demanded services from consumer as they can clean up their wool garment easily. But, the increase of technology nowadays make dry cleaning become plummeted as new technology like synthetic fibres and chemical additives has cut the need for dry cleaning.

Next, Electric Utilities. The writer of Myopia Marketing described this electric utility as one of those supposedly "no substitute" products. When the incandescent lamp came along, kerosene lights were finished. Later, the waterwheel and the steam engine were cut to ribbons by the flexibility, reliability, simplicity, and just plain easy availability of electric motors. The prosperity of electric utilities continues to wax extravagant as each house has many electric utilities in it. But, nowadays, the number of competitor for electric utilities has increases for example solar power and wind energy.

        Moreover, grocery store. According to writer, the first genuine supermarket was opened in 1930 in Jamaica, Long Island. In 1993, supermarket has opened in many places like California, Ohio and Pennsylvania. Later in 1936, the National Wholesale Grocers convention and the New Jersey Retail Grocers Association said that there is nothing to fear from the supermarket as the big chain marked supermarket as cheapy, horse-and-buggy and unethical opportunities. They also said that the supermarket narrow appeal to the price buyer limited the size of their market. When imitators came, there would be wholesale liquidations as volume fell. The high sales of the supermarket were said to be partly due to their novelty. The chains discovered that survival required going into the supermarket business. This meant the wholesale destruction of their huge investments in corner store sites and in established distribution and merchandising methods.

        Last example that writer said in Shadow of Obsolescence is self-deceiving cycle. The writer said that it is hard for people nowadays confidently hail the twin messiahs of electronics and chemicals to see how things could possibly go wrong with these galloping industries. In truth, according to the writer, there is no things as a growth industry. There are only companies organized and operated to create and capitalize on growth opportunities. We can see the example of self-deceiving cycle from the history of every deaf and dying growth industries. There are four conditions that showing about this self-deceiving cycle. The four condition are the belief that growth is assured by an expanding and more affluent population, the belief that there is no competitive substitute for the industry's major product, too much faith in mass production and in the advantages of rapidly declining unit costs as output rises, and Preoccupation with a product that lends itself to carefully controlled scientific experimentation, improvement, and manufacturing cost reduction.

        Next, the other point that writer pointed from Myopia Marketing is population myth. Population myth is about the beliefs that profits are confirmed by an increasing number of population in certain area. The writer was argued about population myth as the market for the product keep growing, the management tends to stop thinking about future success. The business needs to focuses on expanding its production rather than increase their marketing. There are four main point that the writer pointed from population myth. The four point are asking trouble, the perils of petroleum, the idea of indispensability and uncertain future.