Marketing myopia means trying to sell your product without concentrating on meeting the utility of your product/good. The lack of marketing foresight means your product will maybe sell for the next few months but will drop drastically after that caused by the lack of ability to see your product’s sales in the future.

Theodore Levitt, the” inventor” of marketing myopia in 1960 took the example of the railway industry as it showed very clearly the idea of marketing myopia. The railway industry believed that they would be vital in transportation from A to B for a long time without any competitors. But what they didn’t realize was that they didn’t work in the railway industry but in the transportation industry. The transportation industry grew soon after the railways were made, and the most popular transportation method shifted to air travel and other faster and more convenient ways of traveling. The learning from this is that we have to look into the future in order to know where we are heading. Focusing only on the present is a bad idea as a profitable business needs to focus on what is to come and make changes according to the future to stay making a profit. Levitt brought up his marketing myopia discussion more than 60 years ago, but it is still to this date a very relevant theory.

The University of Harvard has made some research on how many new product launches fail every year. This percentage is from the lowest of 75% up to 95%. This means that too many potential launches end up failing. The high number of failed launches is mainly caused by marketing myopia. The sellers of these products are obsessed with sales instead of taking into consideration a broader aspect that would increase the chance of the product doing well in the market. Levitt’s advice to companies is to make a model that focuses on the customer’s needs instead of the company’s needs. And to solve the customer’s needs he needed a big-picture business strategy. “Any company’s services are only as relevant as the problems they solve.”

According to the German American professor and economist, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill; they want a quarter-inch hole.”

Marketing myopia entering the educational system

Education is something that varies between different countries. Countries like Finland are known for their education. Finnish education is a fast-growing sector that is being sold to other countries that want to implement parts of the Finnish educational system into their already existing one. Selling the Finnish educational system abroad is a positive thing for Finland as it sets it in the good eyes of other countries which see education as an important asset. The small size of Finland must be taken into consideration. The capabilities and number of workers in the field of education are limited compared to bigger countries where Finnish education is being sold to. Education can happen also in the form of an exchange which has also a certain number of spots that can’t be exceeded to assure a high-quality education. As the interest in Finnish education is growing at a faster pace there also can come some significant problems. As the educational business overbroad brings a lot of money to Finland this can blind people to do unresponsible decisions with a glam of money in the eye. This can cause marketing myopia. In the study field, it would mean that Finland would allow more and more foreign students to come to study at Finnish universities without having the capabilities and spaces to hold them. It would also have the risk of leaving behind students from the Finnish educational system. As more and more foreigners would come to Finland to study there would not be as many possibilities for Finnish students to have a study place and should have the advantage to study in their own country.

Is Proakatemia falling into marketing myopia?

Proakatemia is an educational program that has a lot of interest abroad. As of now, Proakatemia has kept its characterizable aspects which made it distinguishable at the beginning of its times around 20 years ago. The growth and internalization of Proakatemia are awesome but it also has some risks that must be avoided at all costs. Can a model of team and individual development be for the masses? If we lose the home-like open space of Proakatemia, are we able to contain the essence of what made Proakatemia the differentiative and innovative study place everyone is talking about? As the applications for the program get bigger and bigger, is the concept getting outrun by the demand?

Conclusion:

Marketing myopia is something that we had as a paja topic. I got interested in it and decided to write an essay to acknowledge more information. I talked about the basics of marketing myopia and who first brought it up. The more important thing for me when talking about marketing myopia was the educational sector as it has links to marketing myopia. An attractive line like Proakatemia which is secluded from other lines is very possible to fall into marketing myopia if it is not purposefully taken into control. It has still not fallen into it but who knows what happens in the future. Huge universities may want to make an exclusive deal with Proakatemia which would bring a lot of students in but at the same time wipe out students from other universities. This is just a thought I have come up with but who knows what the future holds. Let´s hope Proakatemia has a bright future for all the future team entrepreneurs to enjoy Proakatemia as we are doing now.

Sources:

What Is Marketing Myopia? The Definition with Examples, marketsplash.com, Teddy Cipolla, 2022

https://proakatemia.fi/en/study-with-us/

Harvard Business Review, A refresher on marketing myopia, Amy Gallo, 2016