Marketing Myopia: Causes, Examples, and Solutions

In 2012, camera company Kodak filed for bankruptcy. What caused one of the biggest camera companies in the world to fail? The answer is marketing myopia—when businesses are short-sighted about their customers’ needs.

While marketing myopia doesn’t necessarily spell the end of your business, it can cause you to lose touch with the needs of your target audience, leading to a decline in sales and growth opportunities. Read on to learn more about what marketing myopia means and how to avoid it.

What is marketing myopia?

Marketing myopia is a common business mistake in which companies focus on short-term business needs (usually for immediate sales) rather than the customer’s bigger-picture needs. In other words, companies are myopic, or short-sighted, about their businesses. These companies look inward, not outward, and focus on their near-term sales goals rather than developing a longer-term vision for meeting customer needs.

A brief history of marketing myopia

The term “marketing myopia” was coined in a 1960 article by the late Harvard Business School marketing professor Theodore Levitt. In the article, which was republished in the Harvard Business Review in 2004, Levitt gives the example of 20th-century railroad companies, which failed because car and plane companies began meeting customer needs for transportation. He argues that the railroad companies’ downfall wasn’t destined to happen.

Instead, railroad companies were myopic in thinking about what they sold: While they thought they were selling railroads (a product-oriented view), they were in fact selling transportation (a customer-oriented view). This myopic outlook prevented railroad companies from remaining competitive by branching into other modes of transport. 

While this lofty business concept might seem unrelated to marketing, Levitt links the two directly. Companies that focus on products instead of their customers are selling rather than marketing. “Selling focuses on the needs of the seller, marketing on the needs of the buyer,” he writes.

Despite being coined in the 1960s, marketing myopia is more relevant than ever: 44% of marketers surveyed by HubSpot said focusing on the customer became more important in 2024, making increased customer focus the top way the marketing industry changed that year.

How does marketing myopia impact businesses? 

Marketing myopia impacts businesses by limiting their growth, sometimes to the point of collapse. This limited growth can manifest in a couple of ways. 

First, your products can become obsolete. Changes in consumer preferences, market dynamics, and technology can rearrange entire industries, and if you don’t keep up with industry trends by listening to what customers currently want, your products or services risk obsolescence. 

Marketing myopia can also cause you to miss opportunities to make new products that buyers want, even if your existing products aren’t completely obsolete. 

Marketing myopia examples

Many formerly successful companies have succumbed to marketing myopia. Here are a few examples:

Kodak

Kodak was once one of the biggest camera companies in the world, but the brand’s focus on film made it fail to adapt to growing customer demand for digital cameras. Ultimately, Kodak filed for bankruptcy in 2012. 

Ironically, Kodak actually invented the digital camera in 1975. Instead of marketing its new product, however, Kodak continued to focus on its film products in fear that digital cameras would cut into the company’s film-related profits. 

In essence, Kodak focused on selling singular products rather than focusing on the needs of its customers. Eventually, other companies started selling digital cameras to meet growing customer demand, and Kodak’s film products were rendered obsolete.

Blockbuster

In 2010, the video store company Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy. It operated more than 9,000 stores at one point, but the brand failed to keep up with the quickly changing video rental industry. Instead of pivoting to online and self-serve video services (like Netflix and the then-popular DVD kiosk company Redbox), Blockbuster focused on in-person rentals.

While Blockbuster did offer mail-order and online streaming services at the time of its bankruptcy, the company entered these markets too late, after Netflix had already solidified its market share. These other companies had been meeting changing customer needs while Blockbuster had continued to focus on its archaic in-store rental model.

Nokia

Nokia forfeited dominance in the mobile phone market to Apple’s iPhone. For a decade, the company produced must-have cellphones with a track record of innovative hardware design. 

Then, in 2007, Steve Jobs walked on stage and introduced the iPhone. This new product featured advanced software rather than creative physical designs (it was a simple rectangular touchscreen). While Nokia had focused on developing its hardware, it had largely ignored a customer need for more innovative software.

What causes marketing myopia?

• Assumed market expansion
• Over focus on production
• Hubris
• Immediacy bias
• Stakeholder pressure
• Fear of change

Marketing myopia sets in when a business focuses too much of its attention on internal and immediate needs at the expense of external and long-term ones. Here are some common contributing factors: 

Assumed market expansion

Businesses might fall into marketing myopia by assuming that a growing market of consumers will purchase more and more of their products. This is a danger for any business in a growth industry.

For example, let’s say a company’s primary market is dog owners. Instead of improving its products to encourage more and more sales—or investing in lead generation to court more dog owners—the company falsely assumes that the increasing number of dog owners will automatically guarantee future success. This leaves room for competitors to swoop in.

Over focus on production

Companies can sometimes become overly focused on the technical process of developing a new product, causing them to miss the bigger picture. Alternatively, a company might also assume that improving production technology will result in rapidly declining unit costs and increasing profit margins. 

This can cause the company to stop innovating, expanding its product offerings, and reaching new markets. 

Hubris

A company’s belief in the superiority of its product or services can prevent it from identifying competitor products and working to improve its offerings in relation to its competitors.

Immediacy bias

A company might focus on time-sensitive, short-term needs rather than long-term ones. For example, let’s say a company is fixated on increasing profits in the next quarter. This leads the company to focus its energy on marketing a product that has historically sold well, rather than focus on developing new products that will be popular with customers in the future. 

Other shorter-term undertakings, like opening a new business location or hiring new employees, can also cause immediacy bias.

Stakeholder pressure

Sometimes, business stakeholders can place a high value on immediate return on investment (ROI). This puts pressure on business leaders to prioritize short-term gains over long-term growth. 

Fear of change

Changing your business model, product offerings, or even rebranding can introduce risk, but excessive caution can enable myopic tendencies. For example, it might be risky to invest in a new line of products or a website redesign, but doing so could be essential in a competitive marketplace.

A 2024 study by the University of Economics–Varna found innovations in technology, such as generative AI, set new standards in marketing tactics, requiring marketing professionals to embrace agility in the evolving landscape.

Overcoming marketing myopia

Marketing myopia isn’t necessarily a death sentence. Consider a hypothetical ecommerce company MyDoll, which makes high-quality dolls for girls aged five to 12. The company sets the short-term goal of introducing a new doll to its collection and increasing market share in the children’s toy market by 3% in the upcoming year. 

Despite spending its entire marketing budget on a marketing campaign for its new doll, Milly, the product doesn’t catch on. To make matters worse, sales of its other dolls also suffer, resulting in a market share loss to other toy brands by year’s end. 

To diagnose what went wrong, MyDoll conducts extensive market research and comes away with a number of insights, which reveal customer needs the brand had missed. MyDoll incorporates these findings into a marketing plan that includes actionable next steps.

To avoid repeating its myopic mistake, MyDoll incorporates a voice of the customer program and market research into its business strategy. The company also sets comprehensive long-term goals.

Although these efforts are expensive, MyDoll ultimately repositions itself for 21st century consumer demands, increases the size of its target audience, and fills an identified market gap, which leads to increased sales and supports long-term growth.

How your business can avoid marketing myopia

• Conduct customer and market research
• Create buyer personas
• Measure marketing ROI
• Set goals in reverse
• Take a step back

A number of strategies can help you avoid marketing myopia, and using a marketing plan template can help walk you through many of the following steps:

Conduct customer and market research 

Marketing myopia sets in when a company focuses on itself, not its customers. Embrace market research that provides information about consumer behaviors and broader market trends. Survey existing customers, target audiences, and the general public, and be open to shifting your business model or marketing strategy based on what you find. 

Conducting a competitive analysis can also help you stay abreast of your competitors. A SWOT analysis can help you understand your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Create buyer personas

It can be hard to truly focus on the needs of an abstract general audience. Creating buyer personas—fictionalized characterizations of your customers that mirror your various market segments—can help you identify and implement marketing methods that resonate with your customers.

Measure marketing ROI

Ensure the strategies you use to promote your business provide a strong return on investment (ROI)—and don’t just help you reach one specific goal. You might find that new strategies, like programmatic ad buying or content marketing, generate conversions for a relatively low cost. Disregard your assumptions about what works, and let the data inform your marketing strategy. 

Set goals in reverse

Instead of looking to the next month or next year, set a 10- or 20-year goal, then work backward to establish incremental goals and targets along the way. Working in reverse like this can ensure that short-term goals support long-term growth strategies.

You might also consider setting goals with the Golden Circle framework, which forces you to answer “why” before setting goals that answer “how.”

Take a step back

Avoiding marketing myopia is about more than individual strategies—it requires a fundamental shift in perspective. While it can be easy to become immersed in your immediate needs, make sure you don’t lose sight of your consumers, your industry, and changes in the market. 

Make time to follow business and financial news and keep up with changes in your industry, and try not to let the day-to-day demands of running your business encroach on the bigger picture.