Good Report About Marketing Management

Introduction

Marketing myopia forms at the time when an organization’s competitive arena is described chiefly as per its products instead of the market needs (Levitt, 1960). Marketing myopia has established to be an influential piece of work put forward by Levitt and several other conceptions within marketing and wider business approach are grounded upon the findings from this approach. According to Levitt (2008), the Myopic culture will pave the course for an organization to fail, because of the short-sighted outlook and misapprehension that a company is in a growth sector. This perspective results in contentment and a sight loss of what consumers require. For continuing growing, corporations need to determine and act as per their consumers’ desires and needs, instead of banking on the presumptive permanence of their offerings (Hartley and Claycomb, 2013). Within every situation, the reason behind threatened, slowed or halted growth is not due to the fact that the marketplace is saturated (Topor, 1993). It is for the reason that there has been a management failure. Further, taking the above discussion into consideration this particular paper attempts to throw light on the concept of marketing myopia. The paper also puts forward example of a well-known automobile company i.e. Ford where the concept of marketing myopia is prevalent.

Concept of Marketing Myopia

Few researchers hold the view that the publication of Levitt (1960) marked the start of the contemporary marketing progress. Its chief theme is the fact that the vision of the majority of companies is highly constricted through a narrow knowledge about what business they are involved in. The marketing myopia concept exhorted companies to re-assess their corporate vision; and define again their markets with respect to broader standpoints (Porter, 1998). It was effective in its influence since it was, like with all works of Levitt, fundamentally pragmatic and practical. Companies discovered that they had been losing prospects that were plain to see when they took up the broader outlook. The paper was quite prominent. The oil corporations (that signified one among his chief examples within the paper) defined again their company as energy instead of only petroleum.
In comparison, at the time when the Royal Dutch Shell initiated an investment initiative in nuclear power, it was unsuccessful in demonstrating a more cautious consideration for their sector. One reason as to why short sightedness is quite widespread is the fact that individuals believe that they could not correctly foresee the future. Although, this is a lawful matter, it is also likely to make use of an entire array of business forecast methods presently available for estimating future conditions in the best possible way. Moving ahead, there exists no such thing like growth industry. There are just corporations arranged and operated for creating and capitalizing upon growth prospects. (Hartley and Claycomb, 2013). There are basically four conditions involved in self-deceiving cycle including:

Firstly, the view that growth is guaranteed through a growing and wealthier populace.

Secondly, the view that there exists no competitive alternative for the major products of the industry.
Thirdly, high trust in mass production as well as in the benefits of speedily decreasing unit costs as output increases.
Fourth, preoccupation with a service or product, which lends itself to cautiously managed improvement, scientific experimentation and production cost decrease.
Marketing myopia is basically an advertising approach, which doesn’t concentrate on the wants and needs of customers, but the needs of a corporation for selling particular products or services within the economic marketplace (Kotter, 2014). Classic economic approach makes an effort to elucidate that customers would tell corporations the kind of products and services required by way of economic behaviour shown by individual customers (Boone and Kurtz, 2013). Corporations could benefit from such behaviour through vigorously researching the way how customers are spending their money as well as what products and services are presently accepted within the economic marketplace. Marketing myopia could deform the corporation’s outlook at the time when managers concentrate more on what the corporation could produce instead of what customers are ready to purchase (Smith et. al., 2010).
Marketing myopia might also take place at the time when a company lays emphasis upon building advertising approaches for incorrect target marketplaces or demographic groups (Boone and Kurtz, 2013). People within the economic marketplace generally see advertising techniques or strategies in different manners; their standpoints are developed upon race, culture, age, or other individual viewpoints. Corporations which are unsuccessful in understanding the consumers’ viewpoint at the time when advertising products and services frequently wind up struggling (Jones, et.al., 2000).
There exists a bigger scope of prospects when the industry alters. It trains supervisors to think beyond their present business practices. Steiner (1979) is one amongst the several admirers who cite Levitt's renowned examples on transportation. In case if a stroller whip producer during 1910 described its business as the "transportation beginner business," they may have been capable of making the inventive leap needed for entering the automobile sector at the time when technological change required it. Individuals who lay emphasis on marketing strategy, several predictive methods and the consumer’s lifetime value could go beyond myopia to a particular level (Schultz et. al., 1993). This could involve long-term profit goals (at times at the cost of giving up short-term goals).
There is no doubt in the fact that the concept of marketing myopia is prevalent in almost every industry today including electronics, automobiles, consumer products and others. The total number of corporations experiencing marketing myopia has been rising during the period of the past decades, in spite of the actuality that there exists a substantial level of scientific backdrop along with research grounded upon this area (Boone and Kurtz, 2013). The conception of marketing myopia has persisted to be a favourite area of academic analysis and discussion, from the period when Theodore Levitt published his well-known paper on Harvard Business Review during the year 1960, till present day (Kotler, 2014). A high number of corporations have established Levitt correct in his perspective, and they served like characteristic examples of the cases of marketing myopia (Beckwith, 1999). The below sections provide an overview of marketing myopia with respect to a renowned automobile company i.e. Ford.

Background of Ford

The Ford Company established during the year 1903, designs, builds, produces and services trucks and cars across six different continents under the brand names Lincoln and Ford (Ford, 2015). The corporation also offers products and services in the spheres of collision, maintenance, vehicle accessories, as well as extended service warranties under the Ford Custom Accessories, the Genuine Ford Parts and Motorcraft brand names (Ford, 2015). Moreover, the company, having head office within Dearborn, MI, offers employment to over 166,000 individuals and manages around 70 plants all over the globe (Ford, 2015).

Ford Marketing Myopia

A good example of this is observed by Ford Motor Corporation’s launch of the Edsel. The Ford Edsel was basically a passenger car of late 1950s developed under the marketing approach, which was going to transform the vehicle segment. The automobile was developed with the intention of being a stylish, large automobile which would satisfy the driving requirements of a large number of U.S. customers as well as families. Even though, the Edsel was launched with much elaboration and promoted through marketing entities and media units, it was an approximately immediate disappointment within the customer marketplace. Despite the fact that reviews at the time stated that the ineffective workmanship and styling of vehicle, business professionals have accredited the letdown towards the corporation’s incapacity of understanding customer needs. The term Edsel is at the present a business term identical to marketing or business failure.
Corporations in the present day’s business atmosphere time and again spend a good amount of money carrying out marketing research prior to introducing new services or products (Smith et. al., 2010). This focus group or research activity might be associated with the complete letdown of the Ford Edsel marketing campaign. Instead of shelling out high amount of money on marketing or advertising campaigns, corporations should have made use of test markets for determining the strength of customers demand for products or services before a launch of new items. Such test marketplaces might also assist companies to develop particular marketing approaches grounded upon the response they get from every customer.
For those who believe that environmental ecology and sustainability could encourage customers to purchase items, at the cost of other traditional marketing forces like cost, convenience of use and service, one might wish to transform mind subsequent to examining the case of Ford. Rather than customers becoming convenience-blind, Ford itself adopted a myopic, failing strategy. With the present requirement for superior products as well as the rising reliance of customers on the cost changes of fuels and the following impacts on their earnings, it would just be normal for Ford to develop superior and fuel-efficient products. Nevertheless, once more, customers showed that they didn’t undergo myopia, in the similar manner that Ford did, and they didn’t support their buying decisions merely on features and superiority. The original introduction of the product was established as being myopic, as it was unsuccessful in considering particular technical forces and the corporation didn’t market correctly the product’s cost as well as money saving advantages to the buyers.
In spite of market recognition along with superior features Ford Edsel failed to satisfy the criteria of the customers, and they did not show much interest towards it, simply for the sake of big size. This was once more other case of incorrect, myopic assessment of the actual, prevailing market needs. Ford failed in this attempt because of its lack of understanding of customers’ needs and preferences.
Conclusion

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