Marketing Myopia Essay

M450

Marketing Myopia Essay

Zhanghui Yuan

       Levitt, as a professor in business administration at HBS, demonstrated marketing myopia is a common problem in many industries, which cause the industry stop growing. Although most of the industries will suffer decline stage, the problem may not because of the market is shrinking or new technology has occur. It may be the problem the industry itself. Companies in this industry are too product oriented. They are not focus on meeting customers’ need. For example Levitt mentioned, railroad industry regard it as railroad business rather than transportation business. The customers are running off other methods of transportation may because the railroad companies have no sense in meet their need when they are deciding how would they go to the destination for travelling. And also the companies fail in creating new demand for the market. In addition, Levitt also raise the Hollywood example to explain the concept of marketing myopia.

       I mentioned HTC as a company that are suffering marketing myopia these years. I’ve thought it one more time after class. At least their products are meeting customers’ need with fancy looking, smooth operating system, and larger solid screen. The thing they were not doing just was that they didn’t spend money letting consumers know how great their product is. The REAL myopic company is Nokia in cellphone industry. Now the company has sold the cellphone business to Microsoft. Nokia used to a 110 billion company. Look at the history from growing stage to decline, it is typically same has the examples that Levitt has raised in his article. I will compare Nokia with Apple. At the end of last century, Nokia released hundreds of products in tight frequency. Such as game cellphone with horizontal hand shank keyboard and music style cellphone with extra control button on the side. They were trying to meet customers’ need in each behavior segment. But after all, they still see the cellphone as a cellphone. The customers’ need was gradually changing when new technology occurred and the internet became faster. People didn’t get satisfied with a machine can make a call. They want something that can do anything. Then, Steve Jobs and his team recreate the cellphone with iPhone. IPhone has a larger sensitive touchable screen and a brand new operating system. Apple transplant OS to a cellphone which make it a mini-PC. It was user friendly with extreme fast response. Nokia used to release a touch screen cellphone like N95 when I was in high school. But Symbian operating system was built for a cellphone with terrible users’ experience. What customers want is a fast, accurate touchable, and multiple application installable machine. Actually it is not about the machine itself, it’s about what can be perceived by customers. IPhone did everything that customers can expect that that time. In Steve Jobs’ presentation in 2007, he introduced iPhone as combination of a widescreen iPod with touch controls, a revolutionary mobile phone, and a breakthrough internet communicator. It is smarter than the old smartphones with a great UI.

I choose these two companies because they were up to time and well known to everyone. In the Internet industry, people are always mentioning users’ experience. Apple and Nokia are two companies with different orientation. Then, one company succeeds, and the other one bankrupted. Apple actually did this innovation for multiple times with Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, and iPad in more than three decades. That’s why it is a great company. All these products are optimizing user experience. And obviously, they focus on how to meet customers’ need. Cellphone industry is typical for marketing myopia topic. We use it every day, and there is so many needs can be discovered by the marketers. There are companies suffering myopia such as Nokia or Motorola, and also there are companies caught the opportunity, like Apple, Google, Samsung and Microsoft. The press is still digging the secret of the success of iPhone even it has been 5 years since the first generation was released. And how Steve Jobs discovers customers’ perceived value has become material in every business school.