Marketing mix
The marketing mix is a strategic tool that helps businesses determine the most effective way to promote and sell their products or services. At its core, the concept traditionally revolves around the four P's: product, price, place, and promotion. Each of these components plays a crucial role in addressing key marketing questions, such as what to sell, at what price, where to sell it, and how to communicate with potential customers.
The origins of the term can be traced back to the late 1940s, when Harvard Business School professor Neil H. Borden popularized the idea. Over the years, various models have emerged, including adaptations that focus on customer-centric approaches known as the four C's, which replace the traditional P's with concepts such as commodity, cost, channel, and communication.
Moreover, in response to the unique challenges of the service industry, some marketers have expanded the mix to include additional elements, forming the extended marketing mix that incorporates people, process, and physical evidence. Despite the evolution of these models, McCarthy's four P's remain the most widely accepted framework in the marketing field today. Understanding this mix allows marketers to balance controllable factors effectively while navigating the influence of uncontrollable external factors, such as market competition and changing consumer preferences.
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Marketing mix
A marketing mix is a tool used to determine the best way to market a product or service. It is a combination of broad factors that address different aspects of marketing. The best-known and most basic marketing mix is known as the four Ps of marketing: product, price, place, and promotion. These four Ps are integral to the definition of marketing itself, as marketers seek to determine what the best product is, what the best price is for that product, where is the best place to sell it, and where and when is best to promote it. The right balance of these four key components must be met in order for marketing to be successful, with success defined as serving the needs of customers while generating optimum income. Marketing models are adjusted until that balance is found.
Overview
The term “marketing mix” was popularized by Harvard Business School professor Neil H. Borden, who first began using the idea in his classroom in the late 1940s. Borden introduced the concept of a marketing mix during a speech for the American Marketing Association in 1953. However, it was not until the publication of his 1964 paper “The Concept of the Marketing Mix” that the model became mainstream.
Borden's proposed marketing mix involved at least twelve “ingredients” for successful marketing: product planning, pricing, branding, advertising, promotions, personal selling, distribution, handling, packaging, display, servicing, and fact finding and analysis. Other marketing mixes were proposed, but none drew consensus approval until 1960, when E. Jerome McCarthy introduced his model of the four Ps: product, price, place, and promotion.
An alternative marketing mix focuses on the four Cs instead of the four Ps, making the customer the focal point rather than the product. The first model using Cs was introduced in 1973 by Koichi Shimizu, who replaced product with “commodity,” price with “cost,” place with “channel,” and promotion with “communication.” In 1979, Shimizu expanded his four Cs into the seven-C compass model, which emphasizes customer and consumer roles. In addition to commodity, cost, channel, and communication, the seven-C model adds company or competitor, consumer, and circumstances. The additional Cs acknowledge that a business is affected by its competition, that consumers who are not actual customers of a company may still be affected by that company’s actions, and that uncontrollable circumstances such as natural disasters may affect the process of marketing. In 1990, Robert Lauterborn also adapted the four Ps into four Cs. Lauterborn’s model is similar to Shimizu’s but replaces product with “consumer wants and needs,” rather than commodity, and place with “convenience,” rather than channel.
Another alternative marketing mix is the extended marketing mix, first proposed by Bernard Booms and Mary Jo Bitner in 1981. This model, which was designed specifically for marketing in the service industry, uses the four Ps of the original and adds three more, for a total of seven Ps: product, price, place, promotion, people, process, and physical evidence. “People” refers to an organization’s employees on all levels, particularly the ones who interact with customers; “process” refers to the systems the organization has in place for offering customer service, including such aspects as handling complaints and anticipating issues before they arise; and “physical evidence” deals with the physical aspects of the service environment (i.e., where employees interact with customers), such as the layout, the interior design, the design of packaging or advertisements, and the ambiance, among other elements. Sometimes an eighth P, performance or productivity, is also included.
In subsequent decades other adjusted models were proposed; some of these new proposals were influenced by the advent of digital marketing starting in the 1990s and becoming ubiquitous by the 2010s and 2020s. For example, in 2004, Sidney (Sid) Peimer proposed what he referred to as the "Internet Mix," which included three elements: sell (trade), tell (inform), dwell (entertain). Still, despite these wider developments in the marketing industry, throughout the 2020s the most widely-accepted marketing mix model remained McCarthy's four Ps.
All of the Ps involve budget, creativity, and personnel and are considered controllable factors. Uncontrollable factors are part of whatever the economic environment is at that time, such as competition, new technology, government regulations, unemployment rates, and changing consumer preferences.
Bibliography
Borden, Neil H. “The Concept of the Marketing Mix.” 1964. Classics II, supplement to Journal of Advertising Research, vol. 24, no. 4, 1984, pp. 7–14. Business Source Complete, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=bth&AN=6630137&site=ehost-live. Accessed 10 July 2017.
Dominici, Gandolfo. “From Marketing Mix to e-Marketing Mix: A Literature Overview and Classification.” International Journal of Business and Management, vol. 4, no. 9, 2009, doi:10.5539/ijbm.v4n9p17. Accessed 10 July 2017.
Kenton, Will. "Marketing Mix: The 4 Ps of Marketing and How to Use Them." Investopedia, 30 Jul. 2024, www.investopedia.com/terms/m/marketing-mix.asp. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.
Nezamabad, Mehdi Naimi. “The Impact and Benefits of Internet on Marketing Mix.” Australian Journal of Basic and Applied Sciences, vol. 5, no. 9, 2011, pp. 1784–89, ajbasweb.com/old/ajbas/2011/September-2011/1784-1789.pdf. Accessed 10 July 2017.
Rojas, Frank. "Rethinking The 4 P's In The Digital Marketing Mix." Forbes, 24 Apr. 2023, www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2023/04/24/rethinking-the-4-ps-in-the-digital-marketing-mix/. Accessed 1 Aug. 2024.