The Explainer: Don’t Just Sell Stuff — Satisfy Needs — Transcript

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1. 0:00Every year, some 30,000 new consumer products are launched,
2. 0:05and 90% of them fail.
3. 0:07A key reason is what the late Harvard Business School
4. 0:10professor Theodore Levitt famously
5. 0:12termed marketing myopia--
6. 0:14a nearsighted focus on selling products and services
7. 0:17rather than seeing the big picture
8. 0:19of what consumers really want.
9. 0:21As he used to tell his students, people
10. 0:23don't want to buy a quarter inch drill.
11. 0:25They want to buy a quarter inch hole.
12. 0:28The railroad lines are a classic case study.
13. 0:31They fell into a steep decline because they
14. 0:33thought they were in the rail business,
15. 0:35rather than being providers of transportation.
16. 0:38Instead of branching out into cars, trucks, or airplanes,
17. 0:41they let other companies steal away their passenger
18. 0:44and freight traffic.
19. 0:46Or take oil and gas companies.
20. 0:48They belatedly started to think of themselves
21. 0:50as energy providers.
22. 0:52But they still devote most of their resources to petroleum.
23. 0:56If they fail to develop alternative fuels,
24. 0:58they risk becoming companies without an industry.
25. 1:02Many others have made, and continue to make,
26. 1:04the same mistake.
27. 1:06Organizations invest so much time, energy, and money
28. 1:09in what they currently do that they're blind to the future.
29. 1:12They get lulled into thinking they're in a growth industry,
30. 1:15rather than continuously capitalizing
31. 1:17on growth opportunities.
32. 1:19To avoid the same fate, leaders should ask themselves--
33. 1:22what business are we really in?
34. 1:25They need to understand that the goal isn't to sell things,
35. 1:29it's to satisfy customers, and accept the fact
36. 1:32that most existing products and services can and will
37. 1:36be replaced by competitive alternatives.
38. 1:39Then, they can identify new offerings
39. 1:41that meet consumers' needs sooner than any existing
40. 1:44or potential competitor.
41. 1:46That's the cure for marketing myopia.