The 4 P's, the 7 P's... and beyond - Part One

The original "Marketing Mix" term as was coined by Professor Neil Borden, of Harvard Business School, in the 1950's

Jerome McCarthy later proposed that a marketing mix was reliant on 4 aspects, all starting with P. They are;

Product
Price
Promotion
Placement (place or distribution)

I'll admit that, as I see it, these four P's cover marketing needs quite well. However, the more time I spend on the interweb, the more I am bombarded by more, extra, and replacement P's.

I've read many websites which have tried to add extra P's for the sake of covering an area that was undefined, or unheard of, during the identification of the original 4. There have also been movements to better adapt the 4 P's to the sale of different types of products, services, and ideas - evidenced by Purple Cow and Presto.

I dedicate this blog to these New/Replacement P's in the marketing mix.

I found one particular site that did nothing but give the 10 P's along with a short explanation and credit for identifying the P.

10 Ps of the marketing mix

1. McCarthy's (1960) traditional marketing mix consists of Product, Price, Place and Promotion
   
2. Kotler (1984:1986) added 2 more Ps - Public relations and Political Power
3. Magrath proposed another 3 more Ps to meet the needs for marketing in service-based industries - People, Physical evidence and Process
4. Y.S.Chin believes that Packaging should be considered another P in the marketing mix

That's the whole website... honest.

I think this new website sets the stage for a lot of study, as well as controversy, in the field of marketing as it pertains to the marketing mix. To start I think that just leaving these few words as the only explanation for the extra p's is a little cryptic. Other sites just contend to listen to the current crop of buzz words created to sell marketing books and argue the relevancy of mix factors, which are very unfortunately named in some cases, like Purple Cow and Pro Bono.

Maybe a little more interweb research will be able to enlighten us "uninitiated" to these new marketing mix factors, and their relevancy in today's marketing world...

In an interweb search, which took no more than an hour, I was able to make the following list of Marketing Mix.

~ Starting with the original 4 (Product, Price, Promotion, Place)

~ I found 6 New P's (People, Physical Evidence, Process, Packaging, Partnership, Programming)

~ 1 extra P all by itself (Philosophy)

~ An entirely new set of 10 P's (Price, Purchases, Points, Partners, Prizes, Pro Bono, Privileges, Personalization, Participation, Presto)

~ And last, but not least, Seth Godin's New P's (Priceless, People, Pennies, Purple Cow)

I'll try my best to differentiate these P's from the original 4. But that will definitely have to wait for Part Two - I'd rather keep these post short due to the scroll lag I've seen some blogs cause.

See you then.