Marketing myopia

Short sighted and inward looking approach to marketing that focuses on the needs of the firm instead of defining the firm and its products in terms of the customers' needs and wants. Such self-centered firms fail to see and adjust to the rapid changes in their markets and, despite their previous eminence, falter, fall, and disappear. This concept was discussed in an article (titled 'Marketing Myopia,' in July-August 1960 issue of Harvard Business Review) by Harvard Business School emeritus professor of marketing, Theodore C. Levitt (1925-), who suggests that firms get trapped in this bind because they omit to ask the vital question, "What business are we in?"
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In 1960, a professor at the Harvard Business School named Ted Levitt published an article in the Harvard Business Review entitled "Marketing Myopia." In the article, Levitt suggested that the most important question for any marketer is, "What business are you really in?" Levitt had examined a long list of successful, profitable sectors, such as the railroad industry in the early 1900s and the motion picture industry in the late 1940s, that had been blindsided by new competitors and run into severe financial problems as a result. His conclusion: Many of these industries simply misdefined the business they were in. The railroads thought of themselves as being in the railroad industry instead of transportation, and motion picture studios saw themselves in the movie business instead of entertainment.