What is Marketing Myopia?
Marketing myopia is Theodore Levitt's 1960 Harvard Business Review diagnosis: firms define themselves by the product they make rather than the customer need they serve, and they go blind to substitutes. Levitt's canonical example: railroads thought they were in the railroad business; they were actually in the transportation business, and the substitution by trucks, planes, and cars destroyed them. The cure is to define the business broadly enough to see substitutes coming — but not so broadly that the firm has no focus. Levitt's prescription: start with the customer need, work backward to the product.
How Marketing Myopia actually works
The framework breaks down into the following moving parts. Knowing what each piece is — and what it is not — is what separates a B-grade answer from an A-grade answer in a written assignment.
- Define the business by the customer need, not the product
- Continuously scan for substitutes that satisfy the same need differently
- Reinvest in capabilities that serve the need, not just the current product
- Resist the temptation to over-invest in production efficiency at the expense of customer focus
A worked example: Kodak
Kodak in the 1990s defined itself as a film and chemistry company. The customer need it actually served was "captured memories." When digital photography arrived, Kodak had the technology — it invented the digital camera in 1975 — but its product orientation kept it loyal to film for two decades too long. Fujifilm, which defined itself similarly but pivoted faster into adjacent chemistry (cosmetics, medical imaging), survived. Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. The textbook diagnosis is Levitt's marketing myopia.
Don't lose marks for these
- Defining the business too narrowly (product-centric)
- Defining it too broadly (no focus)
- Confusing marketing myopia with poor execution
How to use this on the exam
Score-maximizing moves
- Cite Levitt 1960 by name for credit
- Apply the diagnosis to a specific industry (Kodak, Blockbuster, Blackberry)
- Recommend a need-centric redefinition
When to use Marketing Myopia (and when not to)
Use Marketing Myopia when your assignment asks you to analyze, structure, or recommend — and when you have at least two data points to populate every cell of the framework. Skip it when the question is asking for a numerical answer or a single recommendation, since Marketing Myopia is a structuring tool, not a calculator.