Marketing is a continually evolving discipline and as such can be one that companies find themselves left very much behind the competition if they stand still for too long. One example of this evolution has been the fundamental changes to the basic Marketing mix. Where once there were 4 Ps to explain the mix, nowadays it is more commonly accepted that a more developed 7 Ps adds a much-needed additional layer of depth to the Marketing Mix with some theorists going even going further.
THE MARKETING MIX
Simply put the Marketing Mix is a tool used by
businesses and Marketers to help determine a product or brands offering. The 4
Ps have been associated with the Marketing Mix since their creation by E. Jerome
McCarthy in 1960
The Marketing Mix 4
Ps:
1. Product - The Product should fit the task consumers
want it for, it should work and it should be what the consumers are expecting
to get.
2. Place – ‘Place’ describes where and how your customers will buy
your product or service, and how it will reach them. The product should be available from where your
target consumer finds it easiest to shop. This may be High Street, Mail Order
or the more current option via e-commerce or an online shop.
3. Price – The price
that you charge is important, because it will determine the profit that you
make on the product or service.
It must,
therefore, be greater than the cost of producing the goods or services.
The Product
should always be seen as representing good value for money. This does not
necessarily mean it should be the cheapest available; one of the main tenets of
the marketing concept is that customers are usually happy to pay a little more
for something that works really well for them.
4. Promotion – Promotion is how you communicate what you do and/or sell
to your customers. Advertising,
PR, Sales Promotion, Personal Selling and, in more recent times, Social Media
are all key communication tools for an organisation. These tools should be used
to put across the organisation’s message to the correct audiences in the manner
they would most like to hear, whether it be informative or appealing to their
emotions.
In the late
70’s it was widely acknowledged by Marketers that the Marketing Mix should be
updated. This led to the creation of the Extended Marketing Mix in 1981 by
Booms & Bitner which added 3 new elements to the 4 Ps Principle. This now
allowed the extended Marketing Mix to include products that are services and
not just physical things.
The extended 7 Ps:
5. People – Your customers are unlikely to separate the product or
service from those who provide it. All companies
are reliant on the people who run them from front line Sales staff to the
Managing Director. Having the right people is essential because they are as
much a part of your business offering as the products/services you are
offering. Staff
will need to be adequately trained to understand their importance, and how to
deal with customers.
6. Processes – Processes was originally added for service industries,
but there is increasing recognition that processes also affect customer
experience in product companies. The delivery
of your service is usually done with the customer present so how the service is
delivered is once again part of what the consumer is paying for.
7. Physical
Evidence – Physical evidence
refers to what the customer ‘sees’ of your product. It shows them what it would
be like to own or use it. Almost all
services include some physical elements even if the bulk of what the consumer
is paying for is intangible. For example, a hair salon would provide their
client with a completed hairdo and an insurance company would give their
customers some form of printed material. Even if the material is not physically
printed (in the case of PDFs) they are still receiving a “physical product” by
this definition.
In some spheres of thinking, there
are 8 Ps in the Marketing Mix. The final P is Productivity and Quality. This
came from the old Services Marketing Mix and is folded in to the Extended
Marketing Mix by some marketers.
The 8th P of the
Marketing Mix:
8. Productivity
& Quality - This P
asks “is what you’re offering your customer a good deal?” This is less about
you as a business improving your own productivity for cost management, and more
about how your company passes this onto its customers.
Even after 31
years (or 54 in the case of the original P’s) the Marketing Mix is still very
much applicable to a marketer’s day to day work. A good marketer will learn to
adapt the theory to fit with not only modern times but their individual business
model.
Retail
Retail is defined
as “Any business that directs its marketing efforts towards satisfying the
final consumer based upon, the organisation of selling goods and services as a
means of distribution.”
The word retail has
been derived from the French word ‘re-tailler’ which means ‘to cut, trim or
divide’. Thus, retailing means, to sell goods in small quantities.
Retailing not only covers the sale of goods which are tangible but also
includes the sale of services to individual customers.
The term retailing
has a much wider scope than it seems. Retailing not only covers the sale of
goods which are tangible but also includes the sale of services to individual
customers.
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