The Four Ps of Marketing - Essay Example

Essay on the Below Mentioned Topic “Although we talk about the Four P’s as separate parts of a firm’s marketing strategy, in reality, product, price,promotion and place decisions are totally interdependent. Decisions about any single one of the four are affected by and affect every other marketing mix decision” Solomon et al Marketing: Real people, Real Decisions. (2009) pg 36. The report is to include as a minimum the following references: 3 academic text books, 3 academic journal articles, 3 electronic references. -------------------------- Introduction: Whenever we study marketing, the first thing that comes to the discussion is the four P’s of marketing which include product, price, place and promotion. This report will first discuss the meaning and importance of the four P’s, followed by the definition and relevance of marketing mix and then finally go on to understanding (with the help of examples) how the 4 Ps are interdependent on each other and a change in one directly impacts the success of the rest. Product: ‘People think that a product is a tangible offering, but a product can be more than that. A product can be anything that can be offered to a market to satisfy a want or need. Products that are marketed include physical goods, services, experiences, events, persons, places, properties, organizations, information and ideas.’ (Kotler et al, 2007: 316). Services also form an important part of products. ‘It is wrong to imply that services are just like products “except” for intangibility.’ (Shostack, 1977: 73). With the changing trends all across the globe, services have become a very important section which contributes towards a country’s GDP. How much services sector has grown can be seen from the fact that this sector contributes more than 75% in the GDPs of countries like The United States and The United Kingdom. Price: Price is the monetary equivalent that we pay in return for services and products which we consume. According to me, price plays the most important role out of the four P’s of study. ‘Some examples of pricing decisions to be made include: pricing strategy, suggested retail price, etc.’ (The Marketing Mix (The 4 P’s of Marketing) NetMBA, 2007) Place: Place talks about the location from where we want to sell the products and services. It refers to the distribution channel involved in the supply chain. This gives us the information about how many channels a product passes through before it finally reaches the customer. ‘Some examples of place decisions to be made include: distribution channel, market coverage, etc.’ (The Marketing Mix (The 4 P’s of Marketing) NetMBA, 2007) Promotion: Promotion includes the activities undertaken by the seller to make the customer aware of the products and pursue them to make them purchase the products. Advertising, sales promotion, direct marketing, personal selling and public relations are all ways for promoting a product. This may be seen as bridging the gap between sellers and buyers. Although, these four Ps independently play a very important role for any strategic decision to be taken by a company, they can’t work alone without the contribution of the others; only when taken together, they constitute the marketing mix. According to Kotler (in Marketing Mix and Marketing Management: n.d.), “marketing mix is the set of marketing pattern that the firm uses to pursue its marketing objectives in the target market”. How the four P’s are interdependent: ‘Marketing is not an event, but a process’ (Levinson, 2005). These four Ps have relevance only when taken together. Let us think of the 4 Ps as 4 variables that we can control. The objective of marketing is to create such a marketing mix of these 4 variables that will differentiate the product from the competition. If we just play on product quality and do not bother about the price, place and promotion, our product is not differentiated from the competition. Just good product quality does not ensure that the customers will buy it. Along with good product quality it has to be priced at par with the competitors, it has to be made easily available to the customers and also customers do not buy things on their own; they have to be continuously pursued to make sure they keep on buying our products. Hence the 4 Ps are completely inter related. For example, a television set having good quality will not attract customers to the extent that they will but it. Along with the quality it has to be priced at par with the industry going rate, it has to be made easily available to the customers and also it has to be marketed in a way so as to make the consumer aware of the product quality and also pursue him to the extent that he buys it. 4 Ps – The Four Pillars of Marketing Mix; if one fails, the business doesn’t work The 4 Ps are the four pillars of the marketing mix; even if one of them is not working properly the whole strategy fails and the business does not work. Example 1: To elaborate more on this point let me take an example from one of my cousins MBA classes where he presented the business plan on “Launch of 3G services in Brazil”. In the marketing plan, all 4 variables have a very important role to play. Consider if we make the 3G service easily available to each and every person in Brazil, provide international standards of services, and promote this service very well so that people become aware of it, but at the same time charge the services at a price which is unaffordable even by the higher class section of the society, will the product sell? A few may surely buy the service but the objective of telecommunications services is not to cater to a few handful of customers, but to make sure each and every individual of the country is able to use it at an affordable price. So, even one of the 4 variables, if not taken proper care of, would lead to an in-effective marketing mix. This clearly proves our point that the 4 Ps are closely inter-related and interdependent, where the success of one depends on the feasibility of the other and so on. Example 2: Let me take another example of an established business where the company sells its products directly to the customers and no middlemen are involved. Now if company wants to sell its products from the stores other than those owned by the company, then this one decision could change the whole dynamics of the operations of the business. The company has to locate the places where these new stores have to be located. Company has to advertise in order to make its customers aware of these new sales outlets. Inclusion of one middleman in the supply chain means this middleman will take his share of profit from the sales of products. The middleman’s share will come from the company’s share or else company has to go for a price hike of the product. The first method decreases the company’s profits; the second method increases the price of the product for the end customer. Either the company makes losses or the company losses customers. Either way, a single decision related to change in any one of the 4 Ps leads to changes in the others too. In this case, we changed the place, which had a great impact on the rest of the Ps as well since its directly related to the profit and loss incurred by the company. ‘Marketing is viewed by AMAs new definition as being the management of the marketing mix.’ (Bruner, G., 1989: 72) However, the popular paradigm of the marketing mix (the Four Ps) taken together, were not adequate to describe the breadth of marketing applications. Hence as an improvement and to add the customer’s point of view to it, some terms already used independently were grouped and offered as new marketing mix and termed as "the Four Cs" (concept, channel, cost and communication). (Bruner, G., 1989: 72) Conclusion: The above examples clearly indicate how these 4 Ps are not only related but interdependent on each other. These are the 4 pillars of the marketing mix and companies need to be very careful while taking decisions related to any of these. A decision on any one of them could make an adverse effect on the others. It may be possible that in different situations these 4 factors may have different levels of relevance to the situation but overall each one is dependent on the other. Overall writing articles on these topics ‘help create a better learning environment, tend to help students better understand marketing’. (Butler, 1992: 40) References: Bruner, G. (1989) ‘The Marketing Mix: Time for Reconceptualization’ Journal of Marketing Education, vol. 11, pp. 72-77. Butler, D. (1992) ‘Student Attitudes toward Marketing Mix Activities in the Large Class Environment’ Journal of Marketing Education, vol. 14, pp. 40-46. Kotler, P., Keller, K., Koshy, A. and Jha, M. (2007) ‘Marketing Management: A South Asian Perspective’. Kotler, P. (in Marketing Mix and Marketing Management) [online], Available: http://marketinghrdpresentation.com/2009/08/30/marketing-mix-and-marketing-management/ [5 May 2010]. Levinson, J. (2005) The Process of Marketing, [online], Available: http://www.web-source.net/web_development/process_of_marketing.htm [5 May 2010]. Shostack, G. (1977) ‘Breaking free from Product Marketing’, The Journal of Marketing, vol. 41, April, pp. 73-78. The Marketing Mix (The 4 P’s of Marketing) (2007), [online], Available: http://www.netmba.com/marketing/mix/ [7 May 2010]. Read More