Marketing Myopia
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What business is your company really in? That's a question all executives should all ask before demand for their firm's products or services dwindles.
In Marketing Myopia, Theodore Levitt offers examples of companies that became obsolete because they misunderstood what business they were in and thus what their customers wanted. He identifies the four widespread myths that put companies at risk of obsolescence and explains how business leaders can shift their attention to customers' real needs instead.
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Book preview
Marketing Myopia - Theordore Levitt
MARKETING
MYOPIA
Harvard Business Review
CLASSICS
MARKETING
MYOPIA
Theodore Levitt
Harvard Business Press
Boston, Massachusetts
Copyright 2008 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation
Published in Harvard Business Review in July 2004
Reprint # R0407L
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
12 11 10 09 08 5 4 3 2 1
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to permissions@hbsp.harvard.edu, or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Levitt, Theodore, 1925−2006.
Marketing myopia / Theodore Levitt.
p. cm. — (Harvard business review classics)
ISBN 978−1-4221−2601-1
1. Marketing. 2. Customer relations. I. Title.
HF5415.L4832 2008
658.8—dc22
2008005791
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48−1992.
The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives Z39.48−1992.
THE
HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
CLASSICS SERIES
Since 1922, Harvard Business Review has been a leading source of breakthrough ideas in management practice—many of which still speak to and influence us today. The HBR Classics series now offers you the opportunity to make these seminal pieces a part of your permanent management library. Each volume contains a groundbreaking idea that has shaped best practices and inspired countless managers around the world—and will change how you think about the business world today.
Every major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of growth enthusiasm are very much in the shadow of decline. Others that are thought of as seasoned growth industries have actually stopped growing. In every case, the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is saturated. It is because there has been a failure of management.
FATEFUL PURPOSES
The failure is at the top. The executives responsible for it, in the last analysis, are those who deal with broad aims and policies. Thus:
The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer