4Ps Marketing Mix
4P’s is regarded as the renowned Japanese - Italian pizza restaurant chain by Vietnamese foodies.
In the mind of business academics, however, the 4Ps are part of the Marketing Mix, a set of tools for analyzing, planing, and launching a specific product.
Overview of 4Ps
First stated in 1960 through the book “Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach” by E.J. McCarthy, the 4Ps model comprises Product, Price, Promotion, and Place.
Each P is one of the most fundamental components before addressing your specific customer need or demand.
Product
The first P discusses how a product is designed or developed to fit customers’ needs and demands.
You should be able to answer these questions following the product’s characteristics:
What is the Unique Selling Point (USP) of your product?
Why would a customer buy this product? What needs does it satisfy?
What kind of features does the product present to meet those needs?
What are the tangible and intangible assets of the product?
How and where will the customer use the product?
Coca Cola different product lines for each customer niche. (male/female or high/low calories)
Price
Price is an essential component of marketing decisions because it involves one of the most important concerns in the world - money.
If a product is priced too low, consumers will have doubts about its quality. On the other hand, if the price is too high, they will be reluctant to purchase, compared to other cheaper alternatives in the market.
In order to set an appropriate price, take the questions below into careful consideration:
What are the costs involved in manufacturing and delivering the product?
How will customers respond to a change in the price of the product? (increased or decreased sales?)
How will your price compare with other competitors?
What is the level of customer loyalty?
How does the price look in proportion to customers’ income?
From left to right: Zing MP3, Nhaccuatui, and Spotify’s one-month subscription packages.
Promotion
It is a fact that regardless of how beneficial or novel your product line can be, it will not be converted to sales until your customers know about its existence.
That’s the spot where the 3rd P - Promotion comes in handy. Promotion represents the way we communicate to our target audience through different mediums. The aim is (a) to raise awareness of the product and (b) to improve customer relationships with the brand through communicating its personality and value.
What is the objective of your promotional campaign? (increase sales/ build customer loyalty/ …)
What is your budget limit in total for advertising/ pitching the product?
How many mediums will your firm use to promote the product?
Are the mediums above suitable/ being used by a large number of your target customers?
What do you want to communicate to your customers through these promotional campaigns? (list out product features + benefits, and company’s personality as clearly as possible)
Twitter’s “If you can dream it, tweet it” advertising campaign which features celebrities tweeting about their dreams before achieving them - is likely to help the platform take off.
Place
“Getting the right product to the right consumer at the right time, in a way that is most convenient for the consumer” should be your business’s mantra when reaching this part of the Marketing Mix.
The Place factor concerns how your product is being distributed to your consumer, and it should be centered around quality customer service, not just for the convenience of your business.
Should the product be sold through retailers/ directly to your consumers?
How many intermediaries should there be in your distribution channel?
Where would your target audience be most comfortable when approaching your product?
How should the budget for distributing the product be limited?
How can you strike the balance of products displayed in retailers’ shelves and products in stock?
Since the pandemic, Nike has switched from a retail, wholesale model to a digital-first, direct-to-consumer model, which gave it a huge advantage.
Although the concept has been updated recently more with 5Ps, 6Ps, or even 7Ps (with People, Process and Physical Evidence), the 4Ps Marketing Mix still lies as a foundational formula to specify the necessary factors for a successful launch.
Hopefully, more or less, you have benefited from this short blog about the Marketing Mix and its examples.
Love,
mingox
