Marketing Myopia

Marketing Myopia (Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business Review)

Marketing Myopia is an HBR classic introducing the famous question “what business are you really in?” The paper argues that a company’s understanding of how their business is defined is quintessential to its success in sustained growth and progression. The piece focuses on a key case study regarding the railroad industry. In this case, railroads are filled with overconfidence when they are dominating transportation, however with the invention and popularization of other transportation methods such as cars and planes, railroads face steep competition with the maturing market. Because the railroad companies see themselves in the business of “railroads” as opposed to “transportation” at large, they do not consider these emerging threats resulting in their eventual loss of the market and “go[ing] down in a sea of red figures”. Other common misconceptions highlighted in the article include the belief of an ever expanding market, only improving efficiency instead of the product, the idea of indispensability and above all, not making products centralize customer’s needs. I believe this concept is pertinent in industries today. Take the transition from gas cars to EV, or a personal favorite of mine, the transition from factory farming to cultivated meat. Companies may be drowned out if they cannot stay competitive in the broader automotive or protein industries. “In short, the organization must learn to think of itself not as producing goods or services but as buying customers, as doing the things that will make people want to do business with it.”