Column 4 · Market Orientation · Era 1, Foundations (to 1969)
Marketing Concept
Formulation, process · Landmark · Cluster II, Resources and Orientation
Description
Drucker's claim that the purpose of a business is to create a customer and Levitt's warning that firms fail by defining themselves around products rather than customer needs together established the customer-focused philosophy that market orientation research later operationalized.
Managerial Implications
Define the business by the customer need it serves, not by the product it sells. Levitt's railroads lost because they thought they were in railroads rather than transportation. For managers, this means revisiting the mission whenever technology shifts, measuring success by customer outcomes rather than units shipped, and making the customer's problem, not the factory's output, the organizing idea of planning.