The Four P's And Digital Marketing

1792 Words8 Pages
The Four P’s and Digital Marketing In 1964, American marketing professor and author, Jerome McCarthy first introduced the marketing mix and the famous version of the 4 P’s. In his book, Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach, McCarthy proposed the evolutionary theory that decision-making in marketing can be condensed into a marketing mix consisting of Product, Price, Promotion and Place. However, the 4 P’s have been under a lot of scrutiny in recent times. Many marketing professionals believe that the marketing mix is obsolete and that a new concept should be contrived that includes the digital environment. Some professionals believe that the 4 P’s paradigm can adapt to the current environmental changes by including new elements inside each…show more content…
Many companies are being forced to introduce digital marketing into their strategy development or become overpowered by competitors. We have recently witnessed this when retail giant Blockbuster fell victim of the digital technology mantra “adapt or die”. Blockbuster was a major movie retail outlet with thousands of stores, millions of customers and a massive marketing budget that was dominant of all its competitors. In 2000, Netflix proposed an offer to combine their digital marketing strategy with Blockbuster’s traditional retail store, but Blockbuster refused. The decision was catastrophic for Blockbuster. Customers embraced Netflix’s business model and digital marketing strategy, while Blockbuster sales plummeted. The trend continued and in 2010 Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy (Satell, 2014). Netflix continued to grow and today are worth an estimated $41…show more content…
Digital technology is having a huge impact on this. Traditionally, marketing managers would study and research customer trends and offer their opinions based on their experience. However, in today’s digital world, more and more organisations are relying on digital data to gain customer insights. By gathering massive quantities of data on customers buying and spending habits, organisations can now track the customer’s journey from awareness to attitude towards a product, to purchasing and even their loyalty to a product (Leeflang et al., 2014). Technical analysis of customer journeys has become a decisive feature for many digital marketing agencies. It is believed that that companies that analyse data outperform their competitors (Leeflang et al. (2014). Tesco is an example of a top-tier company that relies of data to gain an insight into customer’s behaviour and spending habits. Tesco gather data through loyalty cards, scanners, web sites and marketing research and analysis the data to get a thorough understanding of their customers. This culture has enabled Tesco to become the number one retailer in the UK. Although this is advantageous traditional methods, the main concern is that there is an over reliance on data which is having a nullifying effect on marketing creatively and innovation (Leeflang et al., 2014).

More about The Four P's And Digital Marketing

Open Document