Changes in Well Established Marketing Theories And Models

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Introduction

The business environment is passing through rapid changes due to a major driver of the new economy: on-line technology. Marketing theories and models dominant today are going to be passé tomorrow. In addition, the pure essence of the marketing science is that ought to be adaptive. Borden defines the marketer as a "decider", an "artist", a "mixer of ingredients", who sometimes follows a recipe prepared by others, sometimes prepares her/his own recipe as s/he goes along, sometimes adapts a recipe to the ingredients immediately available and sometimes experiments with or invents ingredients no one else has tried. (Borden, 1964) Thus marketer is constantly adopting different principles to remain market and customer focused. In fact the idea of adaptation comes from nature; a species in order to survive has to evolve. Likewise the fundamental "marketing mix" has advanced, as the elements that make it up, its focus and how it is practiced have changed a great deal over the years.

Marketing Mix in Theory

Marketing mix is a tool organized to aid an organization in reaching its target markets and specified objectives. The model was developed by Borden (Borden, 1964), who first started using the phrase in 1949. The most famous variables are, Product, Price, Promotion and Place, first suggested by McCarthy (McCarthy, 1960), referred to as the four P's. Another set of variables was developed by Frey (Frey, 1961). He classified the marketing variables into two categories: the offering, and process variables. Booms and Bitner built a model consisting of seven P's (Booms and Bitner, 1981) for the services industries adding Participants, Physical Evidence, and Process. Recently, Lauterborn (Lauterborn, 1990) claimed that each of the 4Ps should also be seen from a consumer's perspective introducing the four C's, customer solution, cost to the customer, convenience, and communication.

Marketing Mix in Practise

Alongside with the academic evolution, inevitably came the changes in marketing strategies and procedures. The marketing mix although adopted in its basics, has to catch up with the economy restructuring.

Product

The objective of the marketer is to optimize the product to meet the requirements of the potential customer. Dell has managed to overcome the time-consuming procedure of updates, researches, testing periods, etc, by providing "ideal products" configured in real time in a one-to-one environment, as the customer can build a computer for her/his specific needs from a set of optional components (www.dell.com). Moreover the consumer is becoming more technologically savvy and increasingly able to acquire quality products in the web - providing that a quality product is the one that meets the customer requirements (EN ISO 9001:2000).

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