Marketing Miiopia

Marketing Myopia

by Theodore Levitt

Harvard Business Review
Reprint 75507

HBR

SEPTEMBER–OCTOBER 1975

Marketing Myopia
by Theodore Levitt

E

very major industry was once a growth industry. But some that are now riding a wave of
growth enthusiasm are very much in the
shadow of decline. Others which are thought of as
seasoned growth industries have actually stoppedgrowing. In every case the reason growth is threatened, slowed, or stopped is not because the market is
saturated. It is because there has been a failure of
management.
Fateful purposes. The failure is at the top. The
executives responsible for it, in the last analysis, are
those who deal with broad aims and policies. Thus:

.

.

The railroads did not stop growing because the
need forpassenger and freight transportation
declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble
today not because the need was filled by others
(cars, trucks, airplanes, even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away
from them because they assumed themselves to
be in the railroad business rather than in the
transportation business. The reasonthey defined their industry incorrectly was that they
were railroad-oriented instead of transportationoriented; they were product-oriented instead of
customer-oriented.
Hollywood barely escaped being totally ravished
by television. Actually, all the established film
companies went through drastic reorganizations. Some simply disappeared. All of them got
into trouble not because of TV’sinroads but

because of their own myopia. As with the railroads, Hollywood defined its business incorrectly. It thought it was in the movie business
when it was actually in the entertainment business. “Movies” implied a specific, limited product. This produced a fatuous contentment which
How can a company ensure its continued growth? In 1960,
“Marketing Myopia” answered that question in a new andchallenging way by urging organizations to define their
industries broadly to take advantage of growth opportunities. Using the archetype of the railroads, Mr. Levitt
showed how they declined inevitably as technology advanced because they defined themselves too narrowly. To
continue growing, companies must ascertain and act on
their customers’ needs and desires, not bank on the presumptivelongevity of their products. The success of the
article testifies to the validity of its message. It has been
widely quoted and anthologized, and HBR has sold more
than 265,000 reprints of it. The author of 14 subsequent
articles in HBR, Mr. Levitt is one of the magazine’s most
prolific contributors. In a retrospective commentary, he
considers the use and misuse that have been made of“Marketing Myopia,” describing its many interpretations
and hypothesizing about its success.
At the time of the article’s publication, Theodore Levitt
was lecturer in business administration at the Harvard
Business School. Now a full professor there, he is the
author of six books, including The Third Sector: New
Tactics for a Responsive Society (1973) and Marketing for
Business Growth (1974). Hismost recent article for HBR
was “Dinosaurs among the Bears and Bulls” (January-February 1975).

Copyright © 1975 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved.

from the beginning led producers to view TV as
a threat. Hollywood scorned and rejected TV
when it should have welcomed it as an opportunity—an opportunity to expand the entertainment business.
Today TV is abigger business than the old narrowly
defined movie business ever was. Had Hollywood
been customer-oriented (providing entertainment)
rather than product-oriented (making movies), would
it have gone through the fiscal purgatory that it did?
I doubt it. What ultimately saved Hollywood and
accounted for its resurgence was the wave of new
young writers, producers, and directors whose...