Case Study

Key Points in “Marketing Myopia”

This article stated a marketing concept called‘Marketing Myopia’ via petroleum industry case.‘Marketing Myopia’ means that a firm too obsessed with their own products and paid too much attention on products or technologies, so that they ignored the market when it developed its strategy. This caused that its products were high quality but hard to sell. Furthermore, the competitiveness of products would decrease, even bankruptcy.  

The writer thought that there were no growth industries, the company only to take action to create and utilize opportunities for the growth. In history, every failed business can be concluded a self-deceiving cycle including four conditions. At first, the increase in the growth of population and income can guarantee the growth of industry. Secondly, there is no competitive substitute for the industry's major product. Then, too much trust in mass production and too much trust in output increases lead to the cost per unit drops rapidly. At last, focusing on one product caused that the industry spent strict control of science experiments, product improvement, and reduce the manufacturing cost.

In conclusion, the ‘Marketing Myopia’ article claimed that many businesses failed due to the short-sighted mindset and illusion that a firm is in a so-called 'growth industry'. These firms were‘Marketing Myopia’ mean that they were product-oriented instead of customer-oriented. This leads to complacency and a loss of sight of what customers want. Therefore, understanding what customers want is as important as the quality of products.