Traditionally, marketers were seen as a mixer of ingredients … well, this is how Culliton in (1948) from Harvard Business School, McCarthy in (1960) from Michigan State University and Borden in (1964), from Harvard Business School, viewed and wrote about what marketers do! In essence, they saw that we mix elements together to create marketing strategies, campaigns and specific activities to implement these.

Culliton in (1948) coined the phrase of a marketer as a ‘mixier of ingredients’ and then McCarthy (1960) and Borden (1964) devised a list of what these ingredients were from their observation of the industry. They developed a list of 12 areas and reduced these to 4 elements, which is now commonly known as the 4P’s or ‘Marketing Mix’ (Product, Price, Promotion, Place).

This was how the famous marketing mix was created. However it was the writings of leading authors such as Philip Kotler globally or more recently Frances Brassington & Stephen Pettitt in the UK who popularised it by structuring the early editions of their books around this framework. These books are distributed by Pearson Publishing on a mass scale to marketing educators, professional bodies and practitioners world wide.

So is it still relevant today?

Well, it still dominates many mindsets and attitudes in marketing education, marketing management and the strategic marketing planning process. However this framework is grounded in a mass marketing world and a transactional approach to marketing where the focus is the product, its features and the facilitation of an exchange – or a sale.

I think many agree this is no longer the world we live in! And as we have evolved, so too should the marketing frameworks we use, write about and teach.

Although is does still have some use today, it is clear that the marketing mix is not very well fitted or adaptive to the competitive position and changing marketing landscape emerging in most industries in the western world.

These changes include a rise in internationalisation, development of technologies influencing how we produce, talk about and deliver goods and services, from the transition from product-led to service-led economies and a focus on relationships and people more than a product offering and brand.

The development of the services mix, or the 7P’s of services marketing (Product, Price, Promotion, Place, Physical Evidence, Process & People) by Boom and Bitner in (1981) was one development to address the limitations of the marketing mix.

However like the marketing mix, the services marketing mix is still not well suited to the rising use of electronic resources in marketing and helping us to manage and implement these resources effectively.

In essence, marketing is rising in complexity, especially as the many differing electronic resources and activities we conduct and manage evolves. So perhaps we need a framework that focuses on resources and activities instead of a product offering?

Sources

• Booms, B.H., Bitner, M.J. (1981 ), “Marketing strategies and organization structures for service firms”, in Donnelly, J.H., George, W.R. (Eds), Marketing of Services, Conference Proceedings: American Marketing Association, Chicago, IL, pp.47-51 .
• Borden, N. H. (1964). The concept of the marketing mix. Journal of Advertising Research, June, pp2-7.
• McCarthy, E. J. (1960). Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. Homewood IL: Irwin

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