Marketing Myopia

Marketing is a powerful force in business and a vital element in creating revenue streams that will ultimately support growth and profitability. In this increasingly competitive world, marketing is a fundamental part of all businesses looking to stay ahead of competition. Marketing is an integrated part of building and sustaining long-term customer relationships. Marketing is described by Wikipedia as “The process by which organisations communicate with their customers or potential customers so as to acquire, maintain, and promote an existing relationship, promote new relationships, and/or secure new customers.”

Marketing is an integrated concept, comprising a variety of strategies and practices that are intended to promote product awareness, build market share, gain profit, minimize customer losses, drive sales, and improve quality and/or quantity of products and services. Marketing is also used to make people aware of products and services, thus creating demand, and helps create the need for more products and services. All of these strategies have a direct impact on customers needs and expectations. Therefore, the basic idea of marketing is customer satisfaction. This concept is at the core of most marketing practices.

Marketing myopia is the very opposite of this. It is a perspective that is excessively focused on the narrow prospects and focuses unnecessarily on end customers. In this concept consumers are always considered as a whole and not an isolated group. This approach to marketing creates product concepts that are specific to each individual consumer and is sometimes called a marketing niche. These concepts often differ dramatically from the needs and interests of each individual consumer.

For example, selling cars to 18-year-olds is considered by many people as very different from selling to middle-aged adults. The key to success in selling cars is to find your target customer and address their unique selling goals and needs. A marketing research concept would be to determine what is the selling point of cars to this age group. The concept would then seek to provide solutions to these concerns. Often times this results in providing more features, benefits, and value for the car and its owner.

Another common marketing concept is selling to a specific audience. One concept is to only sell to women. It is considered a failure if a marketing concept is not geared towards selling to all types of consumers. The goal of marketing should be to identify a specific target market and then provide solutions for those problems. Many organizations fail to do this resulting in a loss of customer loyalty and ultimately sales.

These two concepts – marketing myopia and selling to a target group – are at the core of the entire concept of marketing. If one aspect is not considered then the entire concept of marketing will be compromised. This is why the successful execution of any marketing activity requires the collaboration of everyone involved in the activity.