Marketing Myopia Revisited

You are defined by your customer. You are not in the business of whatever your product or service you sell, you are actually “a customer-creating and customer-satisfying organism,” as spoken by Theodore Levitt in his classic article “Marketing Myopia” published in 1975 by Harvard Business Review. I was reminded of this gem of marketing commentary as it was handed out in a boardroom breakfast event years ago. The event was a panel discussion titled “What Business Are You In,” a timely topic hosted by the Institute for Private Business in the Center for Entrepreneurship at Saint Louis University’s John Cook School of Business. What’s interesting about this article and the meeting was that both were meant to provide a clear tie between marketing and business. That is, how does the very act of defining who you are as a company limit or expand growth opportunities?

Levitt’s case in point was the railroads defining themselves in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. He discussed in detail the typical obsession by companies to be product-focused rather than customer-focused. His article has become a seminal work in marketing, is heavily quoted and used by countless marketers. And it’s still true today. Pick any web site or talk to your average salesperson. How many companies are talking about their market-leading product instead of your needs as a consumer or business? Marketing was and still is often viewed as “a necessary consequence of the product – not vice versa, as it should be.”?

But it doesn’t make the key points of his manifesto any easier to act upon today than decades ago. As Levitt pointed out, companies have a tough road ahead, and this is as true now as it ever was: “To survive, they themselves will have to plot the obsolescence of what now produces their livelihood.”

It’s a hard pill to swallow, and it’s certainly not a popular way to conduct strategic planning sessions by starting with a presumption that one day your company will be a shadow of itself, and you should look beyond your specific product to keep a watchful eye on what you’re missing in customer value to create future success (particularly if you are currently a market leader and growing exponentially).?

In many ways, companies today have dramatically improved the customer-centric business model by listening more to the voice of the customers and then acting on it quickly by speeding time to market with the development of new products. This doesn’t mean catering to every customer request, as such behavior will likely ensure putting your company out of business. It does mean a deliberate and constant effort to understand the customer and define your company’s value based on the customer’s needs.

Levitt’s examples of the railroad and oil industries could be replaced with any number of industries, with companies like Borders and Blockbuster as further evidence that indeed Levitt was right in saying, “The point of all this is that there is no guarantee against product obsolescence.”

No one believes they are going to be obsolete, especially when you’re the best at creating your current products right now. But innovation and customer demand can both be viewed as opportunities as much as threats. From a business and a marketing standpoint, it would certainly be interesting and arguably revolutionary if every company – regardless of their current profits and market success - operated as though that they would be dead in 10, 20 or 30 years, and what were they going to do to prevent that??

It’s interestingly ironic that we look backward to insights like Levitt’s to propel business forward by again looking backwards at beginning first with the customer, then the creation of the product, then the materials needed for the product. It ultimately boils down to a loop that begins and ends with the customer. Considering the proliferation of marketing myopia that still exists today, it’s a loop worth revisiting.