Marketing Myopia

Marketing Myopia instantly calls to mind images of marketing courses in my university years. I just remember that our lecturer gave a huge place in this issue in marketing management courses in those years in order to explain importance of marketing strategy. Theodore Levitt is the father of this subject and it became very popular after the impressive article of Marketing Myopia in the Harvard Business Review in 1960.

Although roots of this issue coming from ancient times, marketing myopia still is a big problem for many companies to take into consideration. Today, many companies organizational charts combine sales and marketing together as one department and they run their businesses based on this point of view not only in theory, but also in practice as well. There is no doubt that both departments need to work in harmony for the success but if marketers start to see the market from sales team’s eyes, problems will occur. Because selling focuses on product and the needs and expectations from seller; but the marketing on the needs of seller and the buyer at the same time.

“People actually do not buy gasoline. What they buy is the right to keep driving their cars.” Theodore Levitt said in his article.

Marketing Myopia is kind of a failure and narrow minded marketing point of view in general. Narrow minded approach because ignoring the customer needs, expectations and satisfaction always make the companies to face marketing myopia. In today’s market, guest comfort and expectation play a great role in defining the marketing strategies. Clear communication and consistency are the essential elements to establish the trust among the customers. Still, many companies fail to change and adapt themselves to the new environment that they were living today, because they don’t dare to face realities and customer feedback. As a company, your product may include latest facilities and produced with state of art elements and techniques but may not be matched with customer expectations. It doesn’t matter how magnificent product or service you serve unless there is no demand from customer side. The aim of marketing strategies should to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself.

As Jose Saramago mentioned in one of his novel, blindness is to live in a world where all hope is completely gone.

I can’t find any better word to describe blindness than this sincere explanation. Blindness is everywhere which you can able to see if you are out of the box.

It doesn’t matter which business are you in, if following issues establish your total marketing strategy you have already lost your angle of vision and addicted to marketing myopia.

• think that whatever you produce, you can have response from customer and your product is best and always sells
• focusing on selling products instead of value creation
• focusing on short term marketing tactics instead of long term marketing strategy
• ignoring the competitors
• giving less importance to research and market survey
• ignoring the customer needs and expectations
• ignoring the digital trends
• ignoring innovation (inside and outside the organization) and staying the safe side without accepting to bring new ideas to the market

Examples of Marketing Myopia

You don’t need to look faraway to find examples. Many big and very well-known global companies face this problem because of their limited point of view in marketing or maybe being more sales oriented marketing strategies. For example; Yahoo and Nokia can be given as the best examples of marketing myopia.

Yahoo: all regular users of Yahoo are now prefer Google because google created better relations and sustain customer satisfaction give clear messages about its services.

Nokia: Nokia was many of us first mobile phone brand but nowadays completely disappear. After new technological improvements and trends in this sector nokia couldn’t compare with its competitors and didn’t make any changes to update itself.

When we look at the hospitality side, we can easily see the destination marketing myopia in some markets especially in developing countries. When some hotel investors see the potential especially in emerging markets, they directly jump into that before making enough research. They believe in their product or service and think that that’s the best and sell whatever the conditions are. Focusing on internal power and own product, giving less importance to the market dynamics, local needs, local competitors, culture and consumer behaviour in completely different region, can make the product life cycle very short and we can see the various example of it. Many restaurants and hotels are opening and closing without completing one year.

Tourism is about passionate experiences, not products and just selling. As a destination marketer, you need to look at travel from the guest’s point of view and take into consideration region dynamics and realities when establishing your strategy. Establishing the strategy on following question can help to dismiss marketing myopia;

What can our destination offer to meet the needs of our visitors based on their segments?

Many hotels focus on just selling rooms but it’s a broader subject to talk about. They are also a part of the travel experiences and their aim ought to have reached beyond the guest expectations. Think about your happy holidays and what you mainly remember; of course not the hotel standards, hotel star etc… you remember the feelings during the holiday. When you look at the photographs that were taken during your holiday, you mainly remember memories how funny, happy, exciting, peaceful that was. Value creation plays a great role in this point. If the potential guest are willing to pay more to stay at your hotel, you already established the emotional contact with your guests. Unique guest experiences help you to increase your revenue directly. Recently made survey shows us that 62% of guests would accept a higher price for unique personalized requests. When we look at the past, competition was in very restricted area and competitors were the only other hotel chains but now web platforms and even google is your competitor and these disruptive competitors will be more and more powerful with the technology in the coming future. In addition to that privacy and personal data is new currency and will be more important after global coronovirus pandemic. So, adapting these new items to your management processes will be beneficial to sustain the success.

In addition to that, during pandemic days we have restricted in many ways and learnt different ways of thinking. Experts say that nothing going to be same after pandemic and our daily habits, routines, point of views , way of doing business will completely change. As a result of this period, new segments, new businesses, new love marks will arise. So, each company needs to seek advantages of this crisis and see the potential in their areas and focus on more e-commerce, digital investments, research and development, a-commerce (based on the sector), and value creation among the customers rather than staying at stable level and just trusting on their product and service because future is a completely big threat if you ignore the change and drop into marketing myopia.

Examples can be vary, but in general marketing myopia is a narrow thinking way of marketing and if you enlarge your vision, see the big picture, keep the passion in your heart and listen both sides (company and customer) before taking any major decision which determine company route, future will be so bright for every sector.

You may kindly find more of my articles on www.tasteofjourney.com