Literature Review on Marketing Myopia free essay sample

It is because there has been a failure of management. 1. An industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process. Businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products. 2. Companies stop growing because of a failure in management, not because the market is saturated but because of MYOPIA. Example: Railroads declined because they â€Å"were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented. They declined not because of cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones, but because of their own myopia. The article is as much about strategy as it is about marketing, but it also introduced the most influential marketing idea of the past half century: that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers needs rather than on selling products. ? Article 2: An Integrated View of Marketing Myopia The article brings out the types of Marketing Myopia in a classification scheme. It highlights the importance of cross-fertilization ideas and innovative marketing strategies. Marketing Myopia was initially described as a firm’s short-sightedness or narrowness when it is attempting to define its business. Marketing Myopia can be classified along two-dimensions: (1) Management’s definition of the firm (2) The firm’s business environment perspective. Firms with a single-industry perspective are preoccupied with the actions and reactions of immediate competitors. Firms with a multi-industry perspective, on the other hand, have a broader outlook of the market. Railroading declined, Levitt said, because railroaders thought their job was to be railroaders, to run trains. They failed to realize they were in the transportation business. Or, perhaps more correctly, their industry was, as we say today, a logistics service involved in supply chain management. The article goes on to talk about one portion of the rail network increasingly recognized as not being myopic: the small railroads (called regionals if they are more than a few hundred miles long). Since 1970, shortlines and regionals have demonstrated that they are in the transportation or logistics business; they know they cannot survive with the mentality of simply running trains. Many of them offer value-added services, including learning customers supply chain needs to the point of being able to act as logistics consultants providing solutions. The article analyzes the example of June 1970 when Penn Central ran out of money and launched the largest bankruptcy case in US history. ? Article 4: Futuristics: Reducing Marketing Myopia Futuristics is the study of the future. Marketing is one discipline which can benefit greatly from futuristics. Futuristics can be used to generate new product ideas. Also, a market planner with a solid knowledge of futuristics and prepare more useful marketing plans than one without this knowledge. After all, every firm can be affected by some change in its technological, economic, sociological, cultural, legal, political, or competitive environment. At the very least, futuristics encourages a future orientation. Indeed, many large corporations, including General Electric, General Foods, IBM, and Mobil, are involved to some extent in future research. Marketing myopia occurs not only when a firm defines itself too narrowly – that is, in terms of what it produces rather than the need it satisfies-but also when a firm persists in being present-oriented. Firms that are not cognizant of the changes and threats the future might bring may find themselves in danger of early obsolescence. The railroads, which Levitt accused of suffering from marketing myopia, suffered from future myopia as well. The railroads refused to believe that the future might bring a superior means of moving people and freight and consequently were unprepared for the onslaught of the automobile, truck, and airplane. The author believes that the high rate of product failure, which for some product categories may be as high as 80 percent, may be due to future myopia, the inability or refusal of a firm to forecast the future. Consequently, products are introduced in a business environment which may be very different from the one anticipated by the firm. Small wonder that many products are doomed to failure. Every firm should have at least one planner who is very future oriented. Someone must look ahead to possible future environments that might result in the obsolescence of a firms products/services-perhaps even the death of the firm itself. Article 5: Reconsidering the Classics: Reader Response to Marketing Myopia This paper examines consumer reactions to a much-admired article, Marketing Myopia by Theodore Levitt. More famously, the article argued that top management suffers from marketing myopia. Senior executives focus on the products their company produces, not the customer needs they serve, and consequently tend to define the business too narrowly railroads instead of transport, movies instead of entertainment, oil instead of energy, buggy whips instead of sex toys. Such short-sightedness, he went on, begets blindness, and blindness begets extinction. Failure is unavoidable. Only customer orientation can save the day. Although customer centricity is the centrepiece of Levitts conceptual cosmology and, indeed, of the marketing discipline as a whole it is fair to say that marketing academics have been slow to enact the principles of customer sovereignty when it comes to their own products and offerings. That is, their publications. The question, nevertheless, must be asked: What do our customers actually think of our output? What do readers make of our writings? Are the marketing classics considered classics by the people who really matter our customers or are we deluding ourselves? Are we suffering from marketing manuscript myopia? The purpose of this paper is to find out. It does so by applying Reader-Response Theory, a prominent school of literary criticism, to Theodore Levitts timeless classic. The results are somewhat surprising. Article 6: Global Marketing Myopia The objective of this paper is to expand the concept of global marketing strategy beyond its current myopic focus on product positioning and branding. Emphasis on these issues tends to lead to the conclusion that standardization is the most desirable global strategy. However a successful global marketing strategy needs to be developed and evaluated within the broader context of the overall strategy of the firm, rather than being based purely on customer-market considerations. This calls for examination of resource allocation across countries, market segments and products, the integration of sourcing activities and production, management and logistical systems into global marketing strategy. A narrow focus on the marketing aspects of global strategy can thus give rise to global marketing myopia. Emphasis on issues related to branding and product image, typically leads to the conclusion that standardization is the most desirable strategy in overseas markets. Furthermore, it implies a tacit belief that marketing considerations are the key or even sole factors to be taken into account in formulating marketing strategies relative to the countries and markets worldwide. Frequently, however, the forces militating against global standardization are stronger than those which press for such a strategy. In brief, a successful global marketing strategy needs to be developed and assessed within the broader context of the overall business strategy of the firm rather than based solely on customer market considerations. This implies examination of resource allocation across countries and market segments as well as across products, and the integration and co-ordination of sourcing activities, as well as production, management and logistical systems, into global marketing strategy. Only a careful consideration of all such factors will permit formulation of an effective strategy combining an appropriate balance between standardization and adaptation. Article 7: Editorial: Marketing Myopia Since the publications of V. Packard’s (1957) Hidden Persuaders and Levitt’s (1960) â€Å"Marketing Myopia†, Marketing as both an academic and business discipline has become more sophisticated in its methods and delivery, contributing to increasing prosperity. Yet to its detractors, Marketing should shoulder its share of blame for the growth of the excesses of consumerism and consumption, the widening gap between what the rich can and the poor cannot afford plus the problems created in cultural and lifestyle changes. Examples include the emergence of shopaholics, the slavish adulation to buying products on the basis of their leading brand names, violation of the environment, problems of pollution, wastage of resources and global warming. Are organizations so myopic in their marketing that they have become too self-interested in what they produce for profit? Headline grabbing news in the media about anti-corporate protesters and consumer groups attract more attention than cool objective statements from organizations in defence of their products, services and corporate entities. Are some organizations becoming product-oriented by believing their own marketing communications about their brands and paying lip service to growing consumer antipathy? Or is there too much subjectivity in the criticisms of the marketing of organizations? This special issue aims to explore the consequences of Marketing Myopia for marketing academics and practitioners. ? Article 8: Extending the marketing myopia concept to promote strategic agility This paper proposes that many firms suffer from ‘self-concept specificity’. This is an unconsciously self-imposed restriction on creative strategy formulation that is the result of a highly bounded concept of a firm held by its senior management. Recognizing that this concept resonates with Levitt’s seminal Marketing Myopia concept, the paper draws on Resource-based View and Network Organizations literature to add two further dimensions, Capability Myopia and Boundary Myopia respectively. The paper then explores insights that systems thinking and organizational learning literature may provide to help firms to escape the paradox of adaptation in which conflicting imperatives drive both specialization and variety. Such insights may allow strategic managers to be made more aware of their current organizational self-concept and its constraints, to challenge its assumptions and to reframe it, so generating more innovative strategic options. New schools of strategic thought and new organizational forms have the potential to increase greatly an organization’s ‘degrees of freedom’ for strategy formulation in comparison to the rigidities and determinism of vertical integration and the Industrial Organization school. In an ecosystem of network organizations the capability set of a firm is potentially broadened through access to external competences and new ideas for value creation may be more readily generated. That potential may never be realized if a highly bounded concept of a firm is held by its senior management that results in cognitive myopia. Through insights provided by systems thinking and organizational learning, senior management may be made aware of their current organizational self-concept and its constraints, to challenge its assumptions, to reframe it and so generate more innovative strategic options. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to support discussion. The framework may provide the basis for the development of metrics. ? Article 9: The New Marketing Myopia During the past half century, in general, marketers have heeded Levitt’s (1960) advice to avoid â€Å"marketing myopia† by focusing on customers. In this article, the authors argue that marketers have learned this lesson too well, resulting today in a new form of marketing myopia, which also causes distortions in strategic vision and can lead to business failure. This â€Å"new marketing myopia† stems from three related phenomena: (1) a single-minded focus on the customer to the exclusion of other stakeholders, (2) an overly narrow definition of the customer and his or her needs, and (3) a failure to recognize the changed societal context of business that necessitates addressing multiple stakeholders. The authors illustrate these phenomena and then offer a vision of marketing management as an activity that engages multiple stakeholders in value creation, suggesting that marketing can bring a particular expertise to bear. They offer five propositions for practice that will help marketers correct the myopia: (1) map the company’s stakeholders, (2) determine stakeholder salience, (3) research stakeholder issues and expectations and measure impact, (4) engage with stakeholders, and (5) embed a stakeholder orientation. The authors conclude by noting the implications for research. ? Article 10: Corporate marketing myopia and the inexorable rise of a corporate marketing logic: Perspectives from identity-based views of the firm This article outlines the nature of corporate marketing myopia and details the salient characteristics of a corporate marketing logic. The notion of identity-based views of the firm is held to be highly meaningful to the comprehension of corporate marketing. In addition, the paper aims to broaden the understanding of the antecedents of corporate marketing by making reference to earlier, integrative endeavours (sensory integration, design integration, communications integration, branding integration and identity integration). A corporate marketing logic characterizes those organizations which realize their institutions and corporate brands can be important sources of differentiation. Moreover, it is held that organizations need to be involved in multi-lateral relationships vis-a-vis customers, other stakeholders and with society at large. It is also mindful that an organizational marketing orientation should accord sensitivity to CSR/ethical concerns. A key precept of the corporate marketing logic is that it is institution-wide ethos which is enacted via an organization’s culture. A long and a short definition of corporate marketing are enumerated. Perceiving organizational marketing via the prism of identity-based views of the firm and utilizing the new corporate marketing mix (the 8Cs of corporate marketing) affords a practical and pragmatic means by which senior managers can foster and maintain a corporate marketing ethos and culture.