[Marketing Black Box] Is the 4Ps Marketing Mix No Longer Practical?

While some marketers consider the 4Ps to be sort of an “Old School” theory, others still feel it can still serves as a very Good Planning Tool for any marketing activities, even in internet marketing. The problem is, there are still some fundamental differences between the real world & virtual world, especially in the 3rd P(Place) and 4th (Promotion). Here’s what I think….

For those of you who are new to marketing, the 4Ps, also known as The Marketing Mix, is basically the 4 essential elements of any marketing activities as follows:

(1) Product
It can be Something Tangible (Hard Goods) like an iPhone, or Intangible(Service) like a hair cut in a salon.

(2) Price
The amount of money client pay for a product or service. Price is determined by a number of factors including various costs for production, market share, competition and the consumer perceived value of the product.

(3) Place
The location where the product is distributed or sold. It is sometimes called the sales channel or distribution channel. It also includes any physical store or shopping mall.Some markerters also consider a e-cmmerce store as the Place of the 4Ps

(4) Promotion
The planning and execution of marketing activities to convey the products message and information to the target market . It involves mainly on advertising on different kind of media, personal selling, sales promotion and any other means of marketing communication.

The basic implementation of the 4Ps involves creating  a valuable Product that the market need; price it with a profit; choose a Place strategically ,a prime location, where the target market can easily purchase it; and through the planning and execution of promotional activities, drives the consumer to make that purchase.

While some marketers consider the 4Ps to be sort of an “Old School” theory, others still feel it can still serves as a very Good Planning Tool for any marketing activities, even in internet marketing. The problem is, there are still some fundamental differences between the real world & virtual world, especially in the 3rd P(Place) and 4th (Promotion). Here’s what I think….

Is the Internet a Place or Media?
We can hardly call an ecommerce store to be a location for we can’t really pick a prime location like “across the street of city hall” for our web store.  But we do can place an Ad link on a prime search engine like Google. That’s the reason why while some marketers  think that a website or web store can be consider as a location of sales or Place in marketing, while other marketer argue that an e-commerce shop is only an catalogue on the internet media.

I believe that the internet are both a Place and a Media. Why? Because with the advancement in bandwidth and web application technology today, the internet had gone beyond the usual one way communication media or a place for business and marketing. The Internet had become a platform where we can not only interact, but even collaborate and bring in value to business and life as well. Because of that, it is now possible to use the internet as a Place and also a Media to conduct the Promotion (4th P) activities, depending on the type of product  or service.

The Missing 5th P
Although the 4Ps works quite well in most marketing scenario,I had always felt, even my early days in marketing, that there is a 5th P that must be added into the 4Ps Marketing Mix.  The 5thP I am taking about is People. Because it is people who create the product or service, and it is people who consume the product and service eventually.

So what do you think? Can the 4Ps+5thP Marketing Mix still be  Practical for Internet Marketing?

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