Marketing myopia: Consumer needs, organizational restructuring and recovery

Marketing myopia and satisfying consumer needs

Although marketing myopia is not difficult to understand as a concept, the fact that the number of companies that are affected by this corporate disease keeps growing, with new companies being added to the list, shows that, in some cases, a theoretical knowledge and understanding of marketing concepts and ideas can be miles away from implementing those ideas in everyday business practice. Otherwise, those firms that suffer from marketing myopia would just use a magic stick and make marketing myopia vanish.

Actually, even if companies finally manage to identify consumer needs correctly, they may not be able to meet those needs due to various reasons.

There are many company founders and owners who used to be prolific businessmen in their youth. However, as time passes, these people usually lose their entrepreneurial spirit and ambition. As a result, their companies become less and less competitive, showing thus less interest in successfully meeting consumer needs. Inevitably, in the end, these companies decline and cease to exist, unless radical change takes place, which will hopefully change the fortunes of those companies for the better.

Could organizational restructuring be the cure to marketing myopia?

Organizational restructuring is a management term that simply means turning a company around by identifying and eliminating poor existing and long-standing business practices, while strengthening good practices, at the same time, in order to ensure the company’s survival, as well as its healthy progress and growth in the future.

However, organizational restructuring is easier said than done. Although it is recommended as a solution for companies suffering from marketing myopia issues, nobody can guarantee that is will have the expected results.

Restructuring could mean that a company should change how it approaches its production process, in order to finally meet consumer needs, as a result.

What if it is really impossible for a specific company to completely restructure its organizational structure and existence?

Sometimes, you have to accept that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks, especially if the dog does not really want to be taught.

This situation reminds me of character Hem from the book: “Who moved my cheese”, by the late Spencer Johnson. Hem kept refusing to come to terms with change, even if the devastating consequences of change were clearly evident and felt.

In the same way, there are marketing executives and company owners who refuse to accept that their companies suffer from marketing myopia, and this is largely due to the fact that they have got so much accustomed to the old situation that it is almost impossible for them to vision and adopt a new way of doing things, as changing market conditions requires.

Moreover, another factor that should be linked to the emergence of marketing myopia problems is specialization. Although many companies have enjoyed sustained success as a result of the implementation of heavy specialization to profitably meet emerging consumer needs, this strength of theirs also proved to be their fatal weakness, as their specialization became obsolete, because consumers no more needed the same products. And finally, since those companies simply could not change their production approach and shift their resources to follow modern market trends, they were doomed to failure.

Cases of companies that have recovered from marketing myopia

On the other hand, companies like IBM have managed to finally beat their own marketing myopia just when everybody thought that it was impossible to survive it, proving thus that marketing myopia is not a dead-end situation.

In fact, the recovery process was as simple as caring more for customers and showing a genuine interest in their actual needs, as well as getting rid of any illusions, i.e. stopping to promote any products and services that were market failures and did not truly meet consumer needs just for the sake of feeding the corporate ego.

Coca Cola was another example of a company that has successfully fought marketing myopia. It is not without reason that Coca-Cola is believed to be one of the most dynamic companies, especially when it comes to its marketing approach. This marketing versatility has definitely played a huge role in helping the company to identify any possible weaknesses and mistakes, in terms of correctly identifying and meeting consumer needs. Actually, Coca-Cola has made a long-term effort throughout its history, in order to eliminate any signs of a myopic approach of its market, and its ever growing product portfolio is a major factor that has contributed to this.

Sources and further reading:

What pharma can learn from the railroads and IBM

Overcoming ‘marketing myopia’

There are no such things as ‘industries’, only ways of serving the customer need

The new marketing myopia

A Refresher on Marketing Myopia