MINISTRY OF EDUCATION
AND TRAINING VIET NAM

PRINCIPLE OF MARKETING – MKT101
INDIVIDUAL ASSIGNMENT

Full name:
Roll number:
Class:
Class instructor:

Nguyen Hoang
SE03997
IB1203
Le Pham Khanh Hoa

Hanoi, February 2018


Table of Contents
1. Problem ........................................................................................................................ 3
2. The Production concept and Marketing Myopia..................................................... 3
2.1.

Marketing management orientations ................................................................. 3

2.2.

The Product concept example ............................................................................. 6

2.3.

Marketing Myopia ............................................................................................... 7

3. Story of Yahoo! ........................................................................................................... 8
4. Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 11
References......................................................................................................................... 12

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1. Problem
Living in the very first of the 21st century, people might witness the collapse of many
reputed companies, which were at peak of victory, in the past. They was sometimes
undeadable in our minds and used to lead the world with billions of employees, trillions of
customers, renowned high brand… However, these achievements could not help those
companies to continue withstanding in the harsh market. It is extremely difficult to
determine what caused failures because there were many reasons for brand failures.
There is a brand got a hard fall that it seemed to be unable to come back ever. It is
Yahoo!. Analysts from many fields, at that time, assumed that Yahoo! had failed because
of the stronger innovation of another technology companies as Facebook and Google.
Nevertheless, the truth is not as simple as what we saw. Yahoo! had lost power itself by
rolling in the internal crisis before the rivals grew and threatened its position. In fact, the
seeds of collapse appeared at the time that Yahoo! was enjoying success. When deeply
researching about Yahoo!’s development strategies and activities, we would be surprised
that one of the main reasons for the failure of this brand is “Marketing Myopia”.
This assignment will not only show the definition of Marketing Myopia, but also help
us to understand deeply what Marketing Myopia negatively affects finance and reputation
of a company based on the real story of Yahoo!’s failure. Experiences gained from this
case are the good lessons for those who want to avoid dreadful mistakes in marketing.


2. The Production concept and Marketing Myopia
2.1.

Marketing management orientations

Every company selling products or services has to determine who their target customers
are. Then, the Marketing manager of each company has to design strategies to build
profitable relationships with these customers. However, sometimes what customers need
conflict with the needs of society or even with the interests of company. The questions
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raised here are what should lead the marketing strategies and what side the company should
focus to satisfy its needs. To answer the questions above, Marketing management
orientation is defined.
Marketing management orientation is the way under which organizations design and
carry out their marketing strategies (Kotler & Armstrong, 2011). In other words, Marketing
management orientations are different marketing concepts to create, produce and market
products to customers by concentrating on diverse techniques.
There are five basic concepts with short descriptions below. This assignment only
focuses on the Product concept to clarify definition of Marketing Myopia in the next parts.

The Production concept is one of the oldest Marketing
management orientations. In this concept, customers tend
to choose low cost and widely available products and
services. Business of the company is making units as many
Figure 1. The Production concept

as possible.


The Product concept guides company to focus on producing
products with improvements and modern technologies
because consumers want high quality, high performance
things with innovative features.
Figure 2. The Product concept

The next two orientations are the Selling concept and the Marketing concept. They are
compared with each other in the figures below.

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Figure 3. The Selling concept

In the Selling concept, there is an inside-out view that companies concentrate on
existing products and heavy selling. It is based on the belief that consumers buy products
only if companies offer aggressive selling or promotional efforts.

Figure 4. The Marketing concept

The Marketing concept takes an outside-in view that a path to profits is concentrating
on satisfying customer needs (Kimmel, 2012).
The last orientation is the Societal marketing concept. It maintains or improves
consumers and society well-being to deliver value to customers. Interests and the needs of
the targeted consumer market are what the concept aims for.

Figure 5. The Societal marketing concept

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2.2.

The Product concept example

Studying about The Product concept, organizations should make effort to innovate
technology and manufacture continuous product improvements. A typical example of the
company that follows this concept is Apple.

Figure 6. iPhone generations

Looking at the evolution of iPhone, we cannot deny what Apple has been doing for
providing best products for their customers. Nowadays, iPhone is always on top of the
highest quality brands. Whether people have money to buy an iPhone or not, they still pay
attention to the product and wait for what newest technologies coming in the next
generations. If a brand is excellent enough to build a fandom, thing they care about is not
who will buy, it is how to make better products to satisfy billions of customers.
However, the success of Apple in the Product concept is not always the good guideline
for any companies. Product quality, performance and features are important elements need
to be consider carefully when making any marketing strategies, but overestimating only
the important of products lead to the failure called Marketing Myopia.

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2.3. Marketing Myopia
Marketing Myopia is the term firstly created by a famous American economist and
professor - Theodore Levitt. In the magazine Harvard Business Review published in 1960,
he mentioned Marketing Myopia by the sentence “businesses will do better in the end if
they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling product” (Levitt, 1960).

This term has a great value that it is chosen to be one of the first lessons for students
studying Marketing all over the world.
Marketing Myopia implies the companies’ strategies, which are built by limited
knowledge, narrow-minded view and subjective attitude. During the process of marketing
a brand, the marketing-myopia-marketers see the business at the time they are currently in
but business in the future. They invest money and time too much to make their products
extremely outstanding. Most of them get bitterness because they just care about goods and
services without spending time to understand or find out the future wants and needs of their
customers.
Companies which are trapped in Marketing Myopia often think that they control all the
industry they are in, they look down on their customers and focus only on sales targets,
revenues, profits and other benefits... Resting on their laurels for a long time, these
companies would surely be defeated at once by the competitors, even newbies, if they were
not cautious. Who ameliorate and satisfy customers’ needs faster will achieve the leader
status in the market and destroy the brands that have existed there for a long time.
There is a crucial question that every company must ask themselves: What business are
they doing indeed? Once the answer was figured out, it would be the primary key to keep
any companies far from Marketing Myopia. For instance, a transportation company that
provides bus services for people from city A to city B, should ask itself what business they
are really in. If they just think they are in the bus business, they will fail soon because
people may have a bunch of choices for transporting from city A to city B besides bus. If
they want to go faster, they will choose airplane; if they need a safer trip, train is a good
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choice; or they just care about minimizing budget, there is nothing better than motorbike.
Their purpose is to go to the destination, not going there by what. On the contrary, if the
company realizes that it is in transportation business, can also enter into Taxi service
business, which helps the business to sustain for a longer period. They will be more flexible
and sensitive to the customers’ dramatically changing preferences in modern life. Adding

taxi service or another transportation is an idea helping their business to stand in the market
for a long time, under increasing pressure of the rivals.

3. Story of Yahoo!
Yahoo! was remembered as a symbol of internet communication business. The
company established in 1994 created the most famous chatting tool - Yahoo! Messenger at that time and governed this modern industry with many essential online products as
Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! 3600, and Yahoo! Answers…

Figure 7. Logo of Yahoo!

Yahoo! Messenger used to be the best communication tool using Internet in the world.
It was so popular that when people meet each other, they asked for Yahoo ID instead of
phone number. With a computer connecting to the Internet, people can easily sign up and
get a free account to join the online network. At the beginning, Yahoo! invested on Yahoo!
Messenger strongly. Users felt amazing with extensions attached as sending emails via the
main interface of the application, using emoji when chatting or playing small games with
others. It was this moment that Yahoo! forgot the growth of competitors outside.

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Facebook appeared in 2004 opening the century of social network. Joining Facebook,
people not only share their thoughts, their pictures public, but also chat with other in private.
Moreover, they can receive reactions of the friends instantly in what they shared. Apple
released the first iPhone in 2007, showed the world that mobile phone now becomes
smartphone and help people not have to sit down in front of cumbersome computers all the
time. Google does not own the large amount of accounts in their social community Google+
as Facebook, but it is the giant in searching (Google Search), video publishing (YouTube),
data storage (Google Drive) and so on. Both of them has been developing at high speed, so
what Yahoo! did that time?

Yahoo nonplussed found the way to fight against these serious competitors.
Unfortunately, they failed because they did not know what they really needed to do. People
still need chatting, but less manipulation, more convenience, beautiful interface and multiworking environments. They have smartphone and this is what Yahoo! approach too slow.
Until 2010, Yahoo! released the first Yahoo! Messenger mobile application with imperfect
functions, bad UI and unstable core system (Luan, 2016).

Figure 8. Yahoo! Messenger's interface on smart phone

E-mail is another tool that people use daily. Yahoo! e-mail system has been highly
preferred for a long time because of the connection with Yahoo! Messenger. When the
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chatting tool started weakening, Yahoo! Mail was also disclosed some problems. Interface
has not been changed for more than ten years, lots of useless data was still loaded when
sending an e-mail. Additionally, Yahoo! Mail forced users to install a download tool, which
they thought it was amazing, if users wanted to download attachments from e-mails they
received. Once again, Yahoo! went against people needs (Loan, 2010).

Figure 9. Yahoo! Mail interface in 2008

People also need an online home space to update what they are doing. Yahoo! 3600 used
to cover it all, but it was such an error that Yahoo! managers focused on colorful interfaces,
complicated effects and out-of-date content formats (simple text and pictures) whereas
Facebook started providing friendly simple interfaces, allowing users upload text, pictures,
videos, files in many formats, opening a huge games and applications store. Last but not
least, Facebook encourages people to interact with each other through news feed and
notifications system, through which people announce others their status and know what
others are doing, too. Satisfying people, this is what Facebook did, Yahoo! did not.
As a result, Yahoo! disappears from many fields on the Internet. At the moment, people

use Google Search instead of Yahoo! Search; Tumblr (a microblogging that Yahoo! bought
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in 2013) cannot grow up to be a big social network as Facebook or Twitter; Yahoo! Mail
lost its entire market share into Gmail. According to the research of (Taylor, 2017),
Yahoo!’s statistics are all smaller than Google. Yahoo! cannot define what they really are
and what their mission of the Internet is.
Yahoo! was defeated, it is the fact that we cannot refuse. The reasons for this failure
are listed above, through which we realize how Marketing Myopia damages a high brand.
Yahoo! still exists and continues providing online services for users; however, its position
hardly comes back to the peak as it did.

4. Conclusion
Pioneer of users is the company that knows how to heighten customers, not company’s
products or services. Technologies can change a product or a service but only the
anticipation of customers’ needs has power to beautify brand image and strengthen belief
of customers.
Marketing Myopia reminds us of the dangers companies may face. Today you are
success; it does not mean that tomorrow you will not plummet disappointments. Customers’
needs change day by day so marketers should sit down and listen to what customers really
want. As Theodore Levitt used to say, “People do not want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They
want to buy a quarter-inch hole!” In business, instead of selling what the company is
producing, let’s sell what people need.

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References
Kimmel, A., 2012. Psychological Foundations of Marketing. s.l.:s.n.

Kotler, P. & Armstrong, G., 2011. Principles of Marketing, Global Edition, Fourteenth
Edition. s.l.:s.n.
L. D., 2016. Tinh Tế. [Online]
Available at: />Levitt, T., 1960. Marketing Myopia. Harvard Business Review.
L. K., 2010. GenK. [Online]
Available at: />Taylor, M., 2017. VentureHarbour. [Online]
Available at: />
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