Marketers deal with the marketing mix, which was
described by McCarthy as the four Ps of
marketing. These are:
• Product. The product should fit the
task the target consumers want it for, it should work, and it should be what
the consumers expected to get.
• Place. The product should be
available from wherever the firm’s target group of customers find it easiest to
shop. This may be a high street shop, it may be mail order through a catalogue
or from a magazine coupon, or it may even be doorstep delivery.
• Promotion. Advertising, public
relations, sales promotion, personal selling and all the other communications
tools should put across the organization’s message in a way that fits what the
particular group of consumers and customers would like to hear, whether it be
informative or appealing to the emotions.
• Price. The product should always
be seen as representing good value for money. This does not necessarily mean
that it should be the cheapest available; one of the main tenets of the
marketing concept is that customers are usually prepared to pay a little more
for something that really works well for them.
The 4-P model has been
useful when applied to the manufacture and marketing of physical products, but
with the increase in services provision the model does not provide a full
enough picture. In 1981 Booms and Bitner8 proposed a 7-P framework to include
the following additional factors:
• People. Virtually all services are
reliant on people to perform them, very often dealing directly with the
consumer: for example, the demeanor of waiters in restaurants forms a crucial
part of the total experience for the consumers. In a sense, the waiter is part
of the product the consumer is buying.
• Process. Since services are usually
carried out with the consumer present, the process by which the service is
delivered is, again, part of what the consumer is paying for. For example,
there is a great deal of difference between a silver service meal in an up
market restaurant, and a hamburger bought from a fast-food outlet. A consumer
seeking a fast process will prefer the fast-food place, whereas a consumer
seeking an evening out might prefer the slower process of the restaurant.
• Physical evidence. Almost all services
contain some physical elements: for example, a restaurant meal is a physical
thing, even if the bulk of the bill goes towards providing the intangible
elements of the service (the decor, the atmosphere, the waiters, even the
dishwashers). Likewise a hairdressing salon provides a completed hairdo, and
even an insurance company provides glossy documentation for the policies it
issues.