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Posted by Sherman Whipple on January 24, 2000 at 12:40:41:
In Reply to: Re: 7P's of Marketing, not the usual 4P's? posted by Stuart on January 24, 2000 at 10:23:25:
I, too, agree with Paul. The beauty of the 4P's of Marketing is that they do provide a simple and elegant structure which covers everything: Product, Price, Place and Promotion. Following is an excerpt from my unfinished paper on market conversion illustrating the application of the 4P's and how it provides a marketer 10 choices for any given marketing decision.
For any given Product, building market share involves three broad categories of tactics:
Promotion, Place (distribution) and Price (supply) tactics are the tools you have available to put your strategy in place. In football, tactics are passing, running, and blocking which make up plays. As in football, a marketer must know multiple tactics, learn to mix them up and co-ordinate them to advance his position. The more skillful you are at marketing tactics, the more competitive and successful you will be.
Conversion tactics are what you do to effect change in your market. When you execute a promotional tactic you change the level of recognition and/or the message the market is hearing. When you put a distribution tactic in place, the resulting change on the market will be the number of people who have access to your product and/or the way they access your product. A supply tactic increases or decreases demand, and/or changes the selection.
Note that every tactic includes the phrase "and/or". Essentially, this means that every tactic has a quantitative (push), a qualitative (pull) and a do both option. Running more ads, for example is a quantitative (push) option. Changing the copy for greater appeal is a pull option. Or, running more ads with the new copy is a do both option. So now, within each of the three broad tactics, we have three more choices bringing us up to nine different decisions one must make to execute a conversion tactic. There is only one more which applies to all categories. This is the decision to do nothing, sit back and wait. Sometimes option 10 is the most difficult of all.
You will also note, tactics are not pure. A promotional tactic will also modify demand and access to a certain degree. A supply tactic may effect recognition and access. For example an ad promoting a feature of your product builds recognition, but it may also justify a higher price and, by showing that it is available at a local store, increase access.
The important concept here is that you must learn to use all tactics available to you. You must never rely on just one. Learn when to mix and match tactics and options for maximum effect, and when to sit back and wait for the results before you take the next step.
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