Marketing mix: the 7Ps

21.1 The elements of the marketing mix

Product:

• The business must identify the right product/ service to make the product both appealing and distinctive. To do this, it needs to understand fully both its customers and its competitors. No product will have long-term success this stage is completed successfully.

Price:

• Having identified the right product to appeal its target market, the business must set the right price. The right price for a Versace handbag may be £2000; it is a mistake to think that low prices or special discounts are the path to business success.

Promotion:

• Marketing managers must identify the right way to create the right image for the product and present it to the right target audience. This may be achieved best by national TV advertising, but specific markets can be reached at far lower cost by more careful targeting.
• Promotion includes both media advertising and other forms of promotion.

Place:

• For products, place is how to get your product to the place where customers can be pursuaded to buy. 

People:

• Anyone who comes into contact with your customers will make an impression, and that can have a profound effect - positive or negative - on customer satisfaction. They must therefore be appropriately trained, well motivated and have the right attitude.

Process: 

• Process includes every practical aspect of the customer experience, from phoning to using the website.
• Process is the reality of the customer experience. As this is often the responsibility of operations management rather than marketing, it is possible for there to be a big gap between intention and reality.

Physical environment:

• However good an advertisement may be, customers pick up clues about a product or service from the physical environment. Arriving to a grubby resturant might send customers running. Online, a potential customer may be interested in purchasing, but may need to see a clearer image eg. seeing a dress on a human rather than a dummy.

21.2 How is the marketing mix used?

Can be used by a new business to develop ideas about how and where to market a product or service. If marketing activity is to be effective, each ingredient needs to be considered and co-ordinated. For each of these market situation, managers are trying to set the ideal combination of the ingredients based on a balance between cost and effectiveness. A good product poorly priced may fail. If the product is not available following an advertisement, the expenditure is wasted. A successful mix is the one…