Beyond the four Ps: redefining marketing for the twenty-first century

Marketing

Definition of Marketing

The discipline of marketing needs to quickly move beyond the four traditional attributes it has long relied on, including price, product, promotion and place. Marketing today is much more multidimensional and more targeted to the unmet needs, preferences and wants of consumers. In the area of Business-to-Business markets, trust is now the most precious commodity and the currency of this market. The intent of this paper is to provide a personal definition of marketing, comparing them with definitions from two different sources. Next, the importance of marketing in organizational success is discussed and three examples from the business world are provided.

Defining Marketing

The traditional four Ps of marketing (Product, Price, Promotion and Place) have over time become archaic and out of step with marketing strategies of the 21st century. The 4Ps were originally created by Dr. Phillip Kotler and were designed to be strategic in scope (Arussy, 2005). What has occurred however is that the greater depth of integration necessary to ensure an entire businesses' value chain can effectively operate forces marketing into entirely new roles and responsibilities. As a result, the 4Ps are not as all-encompassing was once seen.

The second definition of marketing included in this analysis is based on the extensive work completed by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff in their book Groundswell, where these authors define marketing as the use of all social media and collaborative platforms to create a unique and highly valued customer experience (Bernoff, Li, 2008). This definition is also only partially correct, as it ignores the more traditional areas of marketing and focuses primarily on the more topical and popular concepts of social networks and Web 2.0-based technologies (Bernoff, Li, 2008).

In defining my own definition of marketing, I believe it is as follows: Marketing is the series of processes, systems and strategies deliberately devised to exceed customer expectations while at the same time creating exceptional value for every member of a businesses' value chain. Marketing is the development and exceeding of customer expectations over time, predicated on the synchronization of the value chain to attain this goal. The customer experience, not just the coordination of the 4Ps or the use of just social networks, that matter by far more than anything else (Arussy, 2010).

Examples of Companies Supporting My Explanation

First, Proctor & Gamble products set a very high bare of expectations and often exceed them through technology innovation (Byron, 2010). This is an example of a masterful marketing company, P&G, using its entire value chain to deliver exceptional value to customer's over time. The entire value chain of P&G is focused on how to exceed not only customers' expectations but also each member of the channel as well. A second example is Continental Airlines and their approach to managing customer service during the recent Iceland volcanic ash episode and the honoring of frequent flyer miles (Arussy, 2010). The third example is the aggressive staffing up of the Comcast Cable social networking teams in response to dropping service and customer satisfaction ratings (Bernoff, Li, 2008). In each of these examples the entire customer experience and marketing strategies have concentrated on synchronizing all efforts across the value chain to ensure customers were delighted.