Since it was first proposed by Jerome McCarthy in 60s famous four Ps have been one of the key core concepts of the marketing often used to define marketing mix.
The marketing mix defines characteristics related to positioning of a product in the market. The most important characterises of the marketing mix are product, price, promotion and place (four Ps).
For the product success in the market place it is important to ensure meaningful and cohesive strategy behind defining marketing mix.
Product: to achieve the success a product or service should be designed with a customer in mind. It is important to define the target market (consumer), understand their needs and desires and ensure that the product/service can satisfy these needs and desires.
Price: right price for the right product is obviously important. It might have a physiological significance as well. The pricing strategy including sales promotions (or no promotions at all) can make a product successful or also can kill it.
Promotions: that includes any means of communication with the target market/consumers. Good promotion strategy should make a sufficient number of target consumers knowledgeable about the marketed product/service. It should also make sure that consumers have high level of interest in the product/service and the number of consumers eventually making their decision to buy/use product/service is significant enough for the business to achieve its revenue/volume objectives.
Place relates to the distribution channels. In the contemporary world place is not only brick and mortar store/location but definitely any other distribution channel such as Internet, catalogue sales, etc. As we have seen, the same business can use multiple channels.
Marketing mix can be different for different variations of four Ps. For example, a business might have a cheaper version of a product for a value distribution channel, which assumes lower price (i.e. some products at Wal-Mart might be such versions). A lower price might be considered for Internet sales, if a company wants to shift to the web business, which has lower cost of operations. In this case the company might be wiling to share savings with consumers.
Any company should think carefully about four Ps each time it wants to introduce a product or service to the market, make changes to any element of four Ps or react to changing market condition such as competition or changing consumer profile. The right marketing mix (four Ps strategy) can lead to a great success or deadly failure destroying very successful products or even businesses.
