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Entrepreneurship – from ideas to reality
Entrepreneurship – from ideas to reality

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2 The marketing mix

A standard approach to thinking about your offering is in relation to the four, and what has now become seven, Ps that make up what is called the marketing mix.

The seven Ps which make up the marketing mix
Figure 3The seven Ps which make up the marketing mix
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The original four Ps are:

  • product – the core benefits of the offer
  • price – often real costs paid, but may include other forms of exchange
  • place – how people access the offer
  • promotion – how the offer or ‘marketing mix’ is communicated.

The additional three Ps are:

  • people – which accounts for the interactions in the service industry
  • physical evidence – which relates to the ability of the customer to discern qualities of a product
  • process – which acknowledges the importance of how a service is delivered.

This are all pointing inwards towards the Target market.

Figure 3The seven Ps which make up the marketing mix

Activity 3 The marketing mix from a customer perspective

Timing: Allow about 5 minutes
  1. Given the focus on customers in this session, try to replace the four Ps with a more customer-oriented version:

Which P corresponds to which C?

Using the following two lists, match each numbered item with the correct letter.

  1. Cost

  2. Communication

  3. Convenience

  4. Customer needs/wants

  • a.Place

  • b.Product

  • c.Price

  • d.Promotion

The correct answers are:
  • 1 = c
  • 2 = d
  • 3 = a
  • 4 = b
  1. What do you think is the point of identifying the four Cs?
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Discussion

One reason for replacing the Ps with Cs is that it forces businesses to orientate themselves around customers rather than thinking about it from a purely organisational perspective. Words like ‘communication’ and ‘convenience’ remind us of the two-way nature of the relationship.