|
Article Excerpt
In business and commerce, the concept of marketing myopia has been a useful tool to predict, analyze and explain the rise and fall of businesses. In this article, we question whether the concept can also be used to predict the ultimate downfall of online learning in higher education, if universities continue to confuse their key mission--education--with the much more product-oriented aim of information delivery. The proliferation of information-based online courses is examined within the context of the limitations imposed by widely used course management systems, institutional impediments and other factors that encourage teachers to adopt information delivery in preference for more innovative, authentic pedagogies. Data and findings are reported from teachers and instructional designers who have been successful in offering complex and sustained tasks online.
Introduction
Since the term marketing myopia was introduced in 1960 (Levitt, 1960), it has captured the imaginations of marketers who have used the concept to predict, analyze and explain the rise and fall of businesses. Even today, nearly half a century on, the idea that a narrow view of core business can ultimately be a death sentence for an enterprise is a useful and effective lens through which to view success and failure in the manufacturing and service industries.
Can the concept be used to analyze and assess the future of online learning in higher education? Could the widespread adoption of Internet technologies in a narrow and myopic manner ultimately lead to the failure of a promising and potentially powerful form of learning? Could the Internet be thrown on the "scrap heap" of educational technologies along with the other technologies that have made a brief but doomed appearance in the classroom (Cuban, 2001)?
Marketing Myopia
In 1960, Theodore Levitt published his seminal article entitled, "Marketing Myopia" in the Harvard Business Review. His thesis was simple but powerful. He proposed that businesses fail, not because of declining customers or obsolete products, but because they fail to accurately identify the business they are in, and they fail to adapt to changing circumstances. Levitt provided many examples to illustrate his argument. For example, the classic case of the manufacturers of the buggy whip, an industry with its eyes "so firmly on its own specific product" that it did not see how it was being made obsolete:
No amount of product improvement could stave off its death sentence. But had the industry defined itself as being in the transportation business rather than the buggy whip business, it might have survived. It would have done what survival always entails, that is, changing. Even if it had only defined its business as providing a stimulant or catalyst to an energy source, it might have survived by becoming a manufacturer of, say, fan belts or air cleaners. (Levitt, 1960, p. 30)
Similarly, Levitt describes the near extinction of the Hollywood movie industry in the 50s because of a myopic view of the business:
Hollywood barely escaped being totally ravished by television; all the established film companies ... got into trouble because of their own myopia.... Hollywood defined its business incorrectly. It thought it was in the movie business when it was actually in the entertainment business. Movies implied a specific, limited product ... Hollywood scorned and rejected TV when it should have welcomed it as an opportunity ... Had Hollywood been customer-oriented (providing entertainment), rather than product-oriented (making movies), would it have gone through the fiscal purgatory that it did? I doubt it. What ultimately saved Hollywood and accounted for its recent resurgence was the wave of new young writers, producers, and directors whose previous successes in television had decimated the old movie companies (Levitt, 1960, p. 25)
The usefulness of this distinction is still evident today, where businesses and organizations often fail to acknowledge their involvement in an industry rather than a more narrow definition of the supplier of a product. For example, in Australia's first criminal prosecution for Internet music piracy, heard in the courts in November, 2003, three university students were charged for creating a website where users could download pirated mp3 files free of charge. In a radio interview on the case (Carrick, 2003), a spokesperson for the Australian Recording Industry Association was asked, "Why doesn't the music industry embrace this technology, have its own pay per download service, rather than fight the tide of technology?" He replied:
Well I'll give you this example. There's two ways of getting money from people on an expressway. One is to bail them up with two pistols and a kerchief around your face, and the other is to build the road and put a tollbooth there. The record companies, the artists, and honest consumers embrace the legitimate technology and delivery means. The pirates who pass themselves off as the new business model, would want you to believe that the legitimate copyright owners and the artists, need to embrace their technology ... We need the highwaymen to be taken out of the marketplace so that there is a fair and proper market for the legitimate consumers and the legitimate copyright owners. (Carrick, 2003)
Here, the spokesperson was failing to recognize that the record companies and industry association see themselves as producers of records and CDs (product-oriented) rather than providers of music (customer-oriented). Apple Computer's move to provide consumers with a legitimate 99-cent download service for music files, recently awarded the Time Invention of the Year Award (Taylor, 2003), has proven that a less myopic view of a service, and a more customer-oriented focus, will ultimately lead to a more sustainable outcome. But to return briefly to Levitt--who...
|
