Page 248 - (DK) The Business Book

246 MARKETING MYOPIA

IN CONTEXT
Demand for Product A dries
FOCUS up and growth slows.
Customer service
KEY DATES
1874 French mathematical
economist Leon Walrus
recognizes that small changes Product B is already in
in consumer preferences have The company cuts development; customers
a big impact on business. production costs and say this will suit them
boost profits. better than Product A.
1913–1914 Henry Ford, US
industrialist, installs the first
production line, and informs
companies that cheaper
per-unit costs are the key to
their sustained growth.
1957 US marketing theorist Production of
Demand for Product A
Wroe Alderson stresses that Product A is replaced
continues to fall.
a business needs to grow and by Product B.
adapt to changes in order
to survive and thrive.

1981 US marketing thinkers
Philip Kotler and Ravi Singh
coin the term “marketing
hyperopia” to describe the
problem of businesses having The company struggles The company continues
a clear view of distant issues to survive. to grow.
but not of close ones.

hen a company has a needs to look ahead and constantly changes, and flexible enough to
fixed idea of what evaluate new openings in the adjust, it can find ways to tempt
W products or services it market. If it does not, growth will customers and prosper. The astute
wants to sell, and a narrow idea of stagnate and, ultimately, decline. approach, Levitt said, is to build a
who it is selling to, it runs the risk In Levitt’s view, when a business around the customer,
of failure because it is not easily business is concentrating on how rather than around the company.
able to adapt to changes in market to sell its products and is blind to He proposed that “an industry is a
conditions. It will miss opportunities the changing circumstances and customer-satisfying process, not a
to expand and conquer new market desires of customers, it will not be goods-producing process.”
areas. Harvard Business School prepared for shifts in the market.
professor Theodore Levitt dubbed For example, a sudden change in Grow or die
this lack of foresight “marketing the economy or government policy, Underlying Levitt’s idea is the
myopia,” a term he first used in an a new technology, or a social crisis inevitable growth pattern of a
article of the same name, published can have an almost immediate business. At first a business enters
in the Harvard Business Review in effect on the buying public. If a the market with a product or
1960. He stressed that a company company is prepared for such service and may enjoy rapid