In Theodore’s landmark article ‘marketing myopia’ he introduced one of the most influential marketing ideas, that businesses will do better in the long run if they concentrate on meeting customers preferences and wants rather than on selling products. Marketing myopia is a short sighted and inward looking approach to marketing that focuses on the needs of the business rather than defining the business and its products by the customer’s preferences and wants. Incorporating this myopic view in the market will cause three inefficiencies. Firstly, the assumption that business is, and will always be, in a growth phase will lead to a loss of sight of what the customers really want. Secondly, too narrow a definition in the market prevents foreseeing external threats, and lastly, being product orientated rather than having a customer orientated business perspective will obstruct decision making and cause a lack of vision to succeed. An example of a company that adopted a myopic perspective was Kodak – a camera film company that failed to adapt to the changing perspectives and preferences of their customers. Kodak incorporated a very narrow and inward looking approach to business, believing that their products would create value for them, rather than meeting the customer’s wants and believing that the customers would create value. This lead to them being unable to foresee the external threats and adjust to the market, allowing Fujifilm (digital film company) to take a substantial market share from Kodak as they were customer orientated. This failure to foresee external threats and changes in the market ultimately will negatively impact those companies that adopt a myopic perspective and as Theodore states, companies like Kodak whom don’t adapt will fail.

Products have many different features that provide value for customers so marketers must ensure that the product attributes satisfy their customers’ needs and wants. The total product concept is a detailed view of a product that illustrates its features and analyses how it creates value for those customers. They do this for the sole reason that to make the product of more value than competing offerings, therefore, marketers must take a comprehensive view of the product. They do this by breaking down its components into three types, the core, actual and augmented products. The core product comprises the fundamental benefits that responds to the customer’s problem of an unsatisfied need or want and is the satisfaction that a customer expects. (the Ipods are music players) The actual product describes those attributes that essentially deliver the benefit that forms the core product. (iconic brand, beatufiful design, high quality, novel packaging and unique features). The augmented product delivers a bundle of benefits that the buyer may not require as part of the basic fulfilment of their needs. It creates value to the both the business through additional revenue streams and allows extra benefits to be given to the customer. (docking bay speakers, itunes, warranty, service after sale). In conclusion, it enables business to differentiate their product of those of competitors and create a competitive advantage.

Customers in the modern age must now not be viewed as passive but active players that create value for themselves by using the companies’ service and products. Co-creation is a business strategy that focuses on customer experience and interactive relationships that encourage them to have a more active involvement. It creates a value rich and personalised experience of a firms services that creates joint value to the business and customer. In order to retain these customers a business would implement relationship marketing to continue the joint value creation. Relationship marketing means the business is proactively creating, developing and maintaining a committed, interactive and profitable exchange with selected customers. It involves a change in focus from a single sales