Marketing Myopia is an important paper written by Theodore Levitt in 1960. It had a major impact on marketing as we know it today.

This is what Wikipedia has on Marketing Myopia: “Marketing Myopia suggests that businesses will do better in the end if they concentrate on meeting customers’ needs rather than on selling products.

The Myopic culture, Levitt postulated, would pave the way for a business to fail, due to the short-sighted mindset and illusion that a firm is in a so-called ‘growth industry’. This belief leads to complacency and a loss of sight of what customers want.

Some commentators have suggested that its publication marked the beginning of the modern marketing movement. Its theme is that the vision of most organizations is too constricted by a narrow understanding of what business they are in. It exhorted CEOs to re-examine their corporate vision; and redefine their markets in terms of wider perspectives. It was successful in its impact because it was, as with all of Levitt’s work, essentially practical and pragmatic. Organizations found that they had been missing opportunities which were plain to see once they adopted the wider view.”

The link to the path breaking article is given below.