The Explainer: Don’t Just Sell Stuff — Satisfy Needs 2022

April 26, 2022



Theodore Levitt’s classic theory says that an industry is a customer-satisfying process, not a goods-producing process.

An industry begins with the customer and his or her needs, not with a patent, a raw material, or a selling skill. Given the customer’s needs, the industry develops backwards, first concerning itself with the physical delivery of customer satisfactions. Then it moves back further to creating the things by which these satisfactions are in part achieved.

How these materials are created is a matter of indifference to the customer, hence the particular form of manufacturing, processing, or what have you cannot be considered as a vital aspect of the industry. Finally, the industry moves back still further to finding the raw materials necessary for making its products.

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11 Comments
  1. To sale is not sell but to make believe in need in product and service, how, it's just open your card in the play.

  2. Decades ago when I was an undergrad marketing major Levitt’s Marketing Myopia made perfect sense to me. However, with decades of experience behind me it scores less than one hundred percent on a reality check. Businesses develop cultures, skills and methods in support of their operating process and the mindset to build, maintain and run trains does not easily transform to creating an automobile manufacturing and distribution operation. Cultures and skills matter.

  3. Myopia view happens in every aspect of our live

  4. So basically Jobs Theory

  5. Very well explained… Thank you

  6. Thanks

  7. Ótimo vídeo! pesquisando tecnologias.

    http://www.nuvembook.com

  8. That Oil and gas industry mistake…very big

  9. Impressive 🙂

  10. incredible

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