A "Retro" Theory Proves Relevant

Theodore Levitt may have written “Marketing Myopia” almost fifty years ago, but his now-classic ideology published by the Harvard Business Review is just as pertinent today. Levitt describes how the railroad companies created their own downfall. “The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew... They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business…they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.”

Today businesses struggle with the same need to identify themselves within the marketplace instead of by their product. This is especially challenging as communication innovations (mostly due to the Internet) are pushing the consumer’s idea of product and services into uncharted arena.

The world has changed. Customers now decide when to accept advertising. For example, they can ignore a banner ad, fast forward through a commercial on their Cable box or Tivo and opt in or out of communication via e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bebo, etc. Firms must adapt “to survive and to satisfy the public by inventiveness and skill.” The way consumers navigate new communication platforms and tools (BlackBerry or iPhone, laptops, Google Docs, online time tracking, instant messaging, etc.) can no longer be ignored without dire consequences.

Levitt taught us that “memories are short.” We see the Internet and computing as the new saviors of business, but how is the company positioning itself for the future? Is it bound to old-fashioned communication? Is it fixated on new techniques? “Marketing Myopia” tells us these are both traps; there is “no guarantee against obsolescence” but to continuously ask what the customer wants.

Detroit’s Big Three automakers fell prey to marketing near-sightedness because they didn’t explore consumer wants. The Big Three “only researched their [consumers’] preferences between the kind of things [they] had already decided to offer.” Today, you must find out what your customers’ problem really is and create the solution. That solution is the key—and the difference between a long-term vision for marketing and just selling.

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