The Harvard Business Review (HBR) journal, which has revealed among the strongest concepts within the historical past of contemporary enterprise, just lately celebrated 100 years since its inaugural subject was revealed in 1922. To mark this event, a collectors’ version titled HBR at 100 has been launched containing among the most influential articles that the journal has ever carried.

The myopia argument

As I picked up this e-book, I felt sure that one explicit article would function in it. This is the basic article titled “Marketing Myopia” which has formed a lot of my very own pondering as a marketer. Authored by Theodore Levitt, a Harvard Professor, the article argued that, to succeed and to then maintain development, firms have to shed their myopic product-oriented view of enterprise, and reorient themselves in the direction of buyer wants.

First revealed in 1960, this text is as related right now because it was six a long time in the past.

Levitt commenced his article by mentioning how railroad firms had stopped rising within the US not as a result of the necessity for transportation had declined, however as a result of that they had outlined their enterprise in a myopic method. They thought that they had been within the “railroad business” and subsequently continued to be completely railroad-oriented in every little thing they did. Meanwhile, different types of transport got here in — vehicles, vehicles, airplanes and even telephones — and took away their prospects. If solely the railroad firms had been customer-oriented, they’d have understood that they had been serving the client’s want for transportation and never for railroad providers. This would have enabled them to evolve and provide different codecs of transportation as properly.

Levitt went on to argue that in each case the place an organization’s development is threatened, the reason being not as a result of the market is saturated. It is as a result of there was a failure in appropriately figuring out buyer wants, and reorienting the enterprise to those wants. As he says, advertising has to “discover, create, arouse and satisfy” buyer wants.

Marketing is just not concerning the promoting of services or products that your organization makes. It is about understanding what customers really need. As Levitt famously informed his college students at Harvard Business School — “People don’t want a quarter inch drill. They want a quarter inch hole!”

Myopia continues to thrive

If you assume this needs to be fairly apparent to all seasoned entrepreneurs, pause to contemplate these current examples of selling myopia.

— Kodak, a well-known model, withered away as a result of it thought that it was within the pictures movies enterprise. The buyer want was one in all recording and preserving reminiscences, not of shopping for photographic movie. When digital cameras boomed, manufacturers like Sony and Canon walked away with this new stream of enterprise.

— Nokia, as soon as a dominant chief in cellular telephones, misplaced its manner when smartphones, powered by android and iOS, entered the market. These new units happy the slender telephonic communication wants that had been served by standard cellphones, and likewise aroused and happy new and enhanced buyer wants. Nokia did not see this massive image of the long run.

— Over the previous few years, Hollywood and Bollywood have been dropping area to streaming providers comparable to Netflix and Hotstar and to gaming manufacturers as properly, as a result of they’re too narrowly targeted on making motion pictures reasonably than on prospects’ leisure wants.

Every yr, over 80 per cent of all new product launches fail. Many of those failures are as a result of entrepreneurs haven’t discovered what particular buyer wants their merchandise will serve in some distinctive method.

Each time I attend an occasion showcasing start-ups, I’m reminded of selling myopia as a result of so most of the founders I meet are targeted on their shiny new know-how platforms and their merchandise, reasonably than on the elemental client wants that they serve. In all probability, many of those start-ups will fail, except they re-orient themselves.

“Marketing Myopia” is a basic article that each marketer ought to learn. It is a compelling reminder that we have to pay fixed consideration to the altering wants of our prospects. Building a fiercely customer-oriented enterprise is the one strategy to keep away from the destiny that has befallen the businesses that bought misplaced in their very own product worlds.

Harish Bhat is Brand Custodian, Tata Sons. These are his private views.