Theodore Levitt Marketing Myopia Analysis

Central Theme
The article “Marketing Myopia” by Theodore Levitt revolves around the importance of directing a business towards a customer’s perspective. In many years, a lot of major producers and companies that directly sell their products in a business to consumer relationship missed that central aspect of marketing. Levitt claimed that many worried about the sustainability of the market’s demand. However he didn’t believe that, and he claims that the industry is having a ‘myopia’. Levitt brought several examples of ‘myopic’ companies in his article that spanned through several segments, which are transportation, fuel or oil, Hollywood, etc. He uses the term ‘myopia’ as if the industry had a troubling vision at the market that they are facing. …show more content…
And when it did, Levitt gave the examples of the auto industry in Detroit. In the past several decades, the auto industry in Detroit has been eaten by many of those coming from foreign countries. The industry in Detroit has failed to really look at what their potential buyers were looking at. It is apparent according to Levitt, that the industry was leaning towards smaller cars instead of the big and muscly upbringing of Detroit. Detroit’s vision was ‘blind’ to see the market’s demand which brought the closure of several major companies in the …show more content…
They felt that it was not necessary to shift to that market knowing that their sales were soaring at the time, right before smartphones were released. BlackBerry fell into the same pit when they thought that their BlackBerry system was the best with a high customer base. Once the smartphone market surfaced, these companies started shattering down. Nokia now turned into the smartphone business with the recent support of Microsoft, and Blackberry has chosen to stop producing phones. These examples have shown how volatile it can be to be blindsided by their own ‘comfort zone’ that they seem to have ignored their customer’s