I just read a great blog post on "VC Mike" called "Marketing Myopia." It quoted a paragraph from Theodore Levitt's Havard Business Review piece to make its point...
“The railroads did not stop growing because the need for passenger and freight transportation declined. That grew. The railroads are in trouble today not because that need was filled by others (cars, trucks, airplanes, and even telephones) but because it was not filled by the railroads themselves. They let others take customers away from them because they assumed themselves to be in the railroad business rather than in the transportation business. The reason they defined their industry incorrectly was that they were railroad oriented instead of transportation oriented; they were product oriented instead of customer oriented.”
One of my mentors once told me that Godiva Chocolate is not in the chocolate business--its in the luxury food business. Thats so true. Godiva is NOT competing with Hershey's, but rather other gourmet and luxury foods.
The blog concludes with the point that in marketing its important to define your market based on how your product or service can solve the need of your customers rather than the types of your customers
posted by Chenster @ 12:15 PM
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