Are the 4 Ps Still Relevant?
Recently, several speakers I've seen at various events have noted the impending demise of marketing's 4 Ps -- product, price, place, and promotion. Curious to discover whether those were coincidence or a burgeoning point of view, I posed the question to several industry insiders.
Their full responses to the question - Are marketing's 4 Ps still relevant? - are posted online in our current issue, but I wanted to share a sampling here to continue the conversation. What's your opinion?
Lior Arussy
President, Strativity Group
In a world where customers face almost endless choice and an optimal comparison of products and prices, a new thinking is required. In a world where private labeling and Web technologies equalize almost every industry, we must shift our thinking. The new 4Ps are not company-centric, but are customer-centric. The new 4Ps are Preference, Premium Price, Portion of budget, and Permanence of relationship. It is these four customer actions that determine an organization's success. Companies no longer control the relationships, customer do. Our guiding principles should reflect this fundamental shift. Welcome to the new era of customer action-based Ps.
Andy Lorin
1to1 Media Editorial Advisory Board member and
Marketing Analyst, Bonasource
In today highly commoditized environment with almost parallel prices, well-informed and savvy customers often [move] between multiple brands of the same product with virtually the same features. It jeopardizes the major buying influencers of the 4Ps, product and price, while leaving place and promotion as merely placeholders.
To live up to the new reality, the 4Ps should get a fair transformation into something like Customer, Product, and Information Sharing. The customer element reflects variables that companies must count when developing a sellable product offering. The product element contains a group of variables responding to customer calls, including acceptable features and prices, to give a product a chance to become a brand. Information sharing communicates the product features, including the whole set of promotional tools, and collects customer information to set up better customer relationships--with loyalty as the end product of marketing.
Peter Nyberg
President and Founder, ingage
I would not say that the 4Ps model has been debunked. However, the strategies for managing product, price, place, and promotion have changed considerably. There are two main reasons why. The first one has to do with consumer empowerment. The second was the advent of interactive technologies. To succeed in today's customer-driven, globally connected economy, marketers must manage each of the 4Ps in a smarter, more efficient manner. One way to do this is to leverage next-generation technologies that enable organizations to target, experiment, measure, and adapt....
The bottom line is executives can't afford to address each of the 4Ps separately anymore. Instead, they must take a holistic approach and constantly listen to their customers for clues on how to optimize their strategies.
Paul Greenberg
Author, CRM at the Speed of Light
The business ecosystem is now controlled by the customers and that means that the 5Cs are dominant. They are contextual, connected, collaborative, creative, and content-driven. That means that customers are looking for personalized experiences with a company that provides aggregate capabilities to enhance those experiences. In that world, marketers become the front-line employees in the conversation with the customer. Their job is to engage the customer and enhance that relationship.
James Vila
Senior Director, Carlson 1 to1, and Principal, Peppers & Rogers Group
Businesses still need to develop products, price them distribute them and sell/market them, so the idea that the 4Ps have somehow gone away is clearly nonsensical.
What is clear is that the ways in which the 4Ps get done have shifted. Two key factors behind the change are the Internet and the fragmentation of marketing disciplines and communication outlets.... Somehow we must find a way of reinventing the way in which the 4Ps are managed in the modern organization in a way that harnesses the power and dynamics of new tools and techniques but remains rooted in a clear understanding of the interconnectedness of all 4Ps.
