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The traditional way of viewing the components of marketing is via the four PS: 1. Product. Goods and services (creating offerings). 2. Promotion. Communication. 3. Place. Getting the product toa point at which the customer can purchase it (delivering). 4. Price. The monetary amount charged for the product (exchange). Introduced in the early 1950s, the four Ps were called the marketing mix, meaning that a marketing plan is a mix of these four components. If the four Ps are the same as creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging, ou might be wondering why there was a change.
The answer is that they are not exactly the same. Product, price, place, and promotion are nouns. As such, these words fail to capture all the activities of marketing. For example, exchanging requires mechanisms for a transaction, which consist of more than simply a price or place. Exchanging requires, among other things, the transfer of ownership. For example, when you buy a car, you sign documents that transfer the car’s title from the seller to you. That’s part of the exchange process.
Even the term product, which seems pretty obvious, is limited. Does the product include services that come with your new car purchase (such as free maintenance for a certain period of time on some models)? Or does the product mean only the car itself? Finally, none of the four Ps describes particularly well what marketing people do. However, one of the goals of this book is to focus on exactly what it is that marketing professionals do. Value Value is at the center of everything marketing does (Figure 1 . 1). What does value mean?