Four marketing Ps, or how they also often referred to, the marketing mix have been a point of many recent discussions. The concept was created by E Jerome McCarthy in 1960, and includes product, price, place, and promotion, ingredients that helped to look at marketing strategy under a different angle. The concept was created during the time when marketing was primarily concentrated around mass produced goods (Hunter, 2013). Much time has passed since the introduction of the concept, and industries have changed. The concept of the marketing mix is still widely used, although, sometimes in more developed and extended versions such as seven marketing Ps. Notwithstanding the fact, that the concept is used by many companies, some professionals challenge the importance of it. Murray Hunter, a researcher from Universiti Malaysia Perlis, writes that “in recent times the marketing orientation of strategy has dramatically changed as the 4 P’s have become much more integrated and other factors from a customer point of view like customer needs and wants, cost, convenience, communication, distribution and relationships are seen as being more important” (Hunter, 2013).
Especially in the technology industry there are some questions to the idea. An analyst David L. Margulius comments that “all this would be fine if we were still in the 1980s, when traditional marketing (à la Coca Cola and Procter and Gamble) was at the top of its game. But big branding and promotional campaigns have lost much of their luster in a noisy world where delivering the goods is suddenly more important than making promises. People are more skeptical than ever about being “marketed” to these days, and they’re less loyal than ever” (Margulius, 2006). People tired of traditional marketing is an important point that Mr. Margulius raises. There is an enormous amount of goods and services available on the market, and when each brand is trying to use big promotional campaigns, people stop paying attention.That is why, inbound marketing is emerging. Startups and even large companies are looking for possibilities to pull users to the products. In the time of Web 2.0, people do not just consume advertisements, they engage with brands, and expect brands to reply back.
Using the marketing mix does not merely mean that companies rely only on old-fashioned marketing campaigns. Although the model does not originally include components focusing on a two-way communication with users and other contemporary techniques, it still can be used for building a foundation of a company and its products. Mukaila Ayanda Aremu and Joseph Adefemi Bamiduro conducted a research for IJBM International Journal of Business and Management, where they found out that “marketing mix has direct relationship with performance of entrepreneurial business.” (Aremu & Bamiduro, 2016) The researchers found out that there are no significant differences in performance between established large corporations using marketing mix and startups, meaning that for both the practice is beneficial (Aremu & Bamiduro, 2016). Many modern companies still use four marketing Ps or extended versions of it. Thinking about a startup or its products in terms of the marketing mix helps to focus on the market, and make some critical strategic decisions.
Margulius, D. L. (2006). Marketing IT in a noisy world. InfoWorld, 28(30), 10. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/194375069?accountid=17238
Aremu, Mukaila Ayanda, and Joseph Adefemi Bamiduro. “Marketing Mix Practice as a Determinant of Entrepreneurial Business Performance.”IJBM International Journal of Business and Management 7.1 (2011): n. pag. Web. 2 May 2016.
Hunter, M. (2013). A SHORT HISTORY OF BUSINESS AND ENTREPRENEURIAL EVOLUTION DURING THE 20TH CENTURY: TRENDS FOR THE NEW MILLENNIUM.Geopolitics, History and International Relations, 5(1), 44-98. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1434866995?accountid=17238