Marketing Myopia – Revisiting A Classic

Posted on 27. Jul, 2009 by Robert Rose in Uncategorized


Posted by Rob Rose on February 16, 2009 at 08:40 PM PDT

My colleague Jim reminded me today about a marketing classic that I read years ago.  I spent my lunch time on a rainy day here in LA re-reading it; and I thought I’d pass it along as a refresher to us all.

In 1960, Theodore Levitt wrote the classic ”Marketing Myopia” in the Harvard Business Review; when he was still a lecturer in business administration at Harvard.

If you’re not familiar with it in specifics, you’ll certainly know of its classic theme of asking yourself “what business you are in“.  This is the classic that is often quoted, and rarely acknowledged cautionary tale of the Railroads not realizing that they were in the “transportation” business, rather than the “railroad” business.   He writes brilliantly of how to succeed in marketing by thinking of customer’s needs, rather than selling product.

I write a skosh more of my impressions on my blog if you’re interested, but basically as we all struggle in this economy, seeking to create value for our customers – and differentiate against our competition – this is just a great refresher course.  And just simply a great read.

Note: I’m providing a link to the document on HBR’s site to buy and download the article, because I think it’s definitely worth the $6.50.  Trust me, you’ll get more out of this than you will a non-fat latte.  But, in all honesty, any skilled Google Search, will locate plenty of copies of the PDF linked around the ol’ interwebs.

Enjoy…

Comments are closed.