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Marketing Myopia

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Abstract

The article, “Marketing Myopia” written by Theodore Levitt, illustrates how businesses interact in their particular industry’s life cycles of growth, maturity and decline. One of the primary focal points of the article is that businesses must know their industry in regards to satisfying their specific customer’s needs. Identifying customer needs and meeting them, allows for continued growth of the company and industry. Recognizing the necessity to satisfy customer’s needs rather than merely selling products will establish an innovative company with continued growth and profits.

Key words: Marketing, satisfaction, myopia, industry

In the article, “Marketing Myopia”, Theodore Levitt, challenges all business leaders …show more content…

The second belief that there is no competitive substitute for the industry’s major product concludes that the threat of innovation is very little if at all possible. In the article, the petroleum companies ignore the threats of competitors who are investing in innovative alternative sources of fuels to satisfy customer’s needs of transportation. They are investing in the original product and how to more efficiently extract, refine and distribute it to their customers. As in the past missed opportunities, the oil industry continues to be blinded by its narrow preoccupation with its specific product and the value of its reserves (Levitt, 2004). Other arguments of this belief suggest that companies operate within a narrow thinking of product/definition and single industry perspective (Richard, Womack, & Alalway, 1993). One example is the grocery retailer; A&P, and how its management defined the organization by the type of product it sold, groceries, and how they made decisions to not add highly profitable non-grocery items to their assortment of products as their competitors did (Richard, Womack, & Alalway, 1993). By not offering such items as national brand merchandise, delicatessens, and seafood sections, A&P allowed competitors to gain competitive advantages in their industry. The third belief that too much faith in mass production and in the advantages of rapidly

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