The 4Ps of Marketing

Distribution

Ensuring that goods reach customers safely and as scheduled is one of the most important of all marketing activites.

Servicing

While all consumers consider price to be a primary factor in decision making, many are prepared to pay a little more to ensure an efficient product for a longer period of time.

Branding

A marketer must become well known in the marketplace and retain customer loyalty against the pressures of competition

Planning

A marketer must produce a product that many people will want to buy

PLACE

Channels, physical distribution, storage making products available when and where customers wish to purchase them. Marketers must ensure that their products or services are available when consumers need them most and in acceptable condition

Selling

Despite all the research into advertising and sales promotion, nothing has been found to substitute for the interested, ambitious, and innovative salesperson.

Product

Includes objects, services, information, and ideas. Involves designing, planning, branding, packaging, labeling, service policies

Sales Promotion

Marketers have learned that it is necessary to spend money to make money. As a result, they seldom use advertising alone to ensure that the message is noticed by consumers. They have devised numerous promotion alternatives to reinforce the media messages.

Packaging

Marketers have long been aware that a package preserves the product, protects the contents, and promotes sales. As marketers discover more about human reactions to size, shape, and color, the form of packaging changes. To ensure retail sales, pacakge designers must cater to consumers' increasing demand for convenience in products as well as to government regulations on labelling and the demands of tenvironmentalists.

Fact Finding and Analysis

Marketers must constantly note variations in consumer attitude, income, and behavior. This research can be in the form of surveys, historical research, observational research, experimental research, motivational research, or a combination of these.

Promotion

Selling, advertising, public relations Promotion is the most visible of all aspects of the marketing mix.

Price

Set pricing policies that meet customer expectations and also earn a profit. In a competitive economy, all consumers are free to choose any product they wish based on appeal and price. For the individual consumer, price may not be the most important consideration; style, fashion, prestige, may take precedence over cost. However, given the choice between products of equal appeal, price will likely become the deciding factor.

Physical Handling

The fewer times that labor is needed to move a product, the less expensive will be costs and expenses associated with the product. This reduced cost will be translated into a more competitive price, or a better profit margin, or both.

Advertising

The use of a mass medium or media to promote a product or service for which business or individual consumers will pay directly or indirectly.

Display

This type of advertising can be in the form of counter displays, floor displays, and window displays. These displays promote a specific product at a time and place connected with the consumers' decision to purchase. Window displays can generate sales.