Comments on: Marketing Mix-Up: Being Treated Like Lois Lane

By: Shiju George

Shiju George — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 11:23:17 +0000

Its really great and practical in nature.

It really help me to understand further about marketing mix required for my assignment.

By: Peter Rodgers

Peter Rodgers — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 09:33:49 +0000

Freddy, what you are doing now is arguing that the 4 Ps are deficient, because they do not cover such things as the competition and activists, either (nor the biggest threat the company I work for faces, ill-concieved government regulation).

Focusing on customer wants and needs does not solely mean doing consumer research (which can often lead you down the garden path) or letting customers customise the product; it means thinking about what problem your customer faces that your product is going to solve. It’s a basic question whether there is a market for your product.

There is a British TV programme called “Dragon’s Den” in which budding entrepreneurs try to convince some millionaires (the dragons) to invest in their idea. In a recent episode I saw, two guys had come up with a very clever technical idea but, when pushed by the dragons to explain why anyone would buy it (to solve what problem), they struggled because they had not thought this through. They had focused on their product without considering customer needs. They did not get their investment!

Freddy’s comment: Peter, please reread my post — I’ve already addressed several of your points within it.

To reiterate, the 4P’s are a framework for organizing your tactics. Period. Adding targets to a tactical mix is nonsensical. Think of the marketing mix as a recipe: would you put the prospective diner in a food recipe? No, not unless you planned on eating them.

As my article notes, the 4P’s does not address targets. That’s why I teach my students to base their 4P’s on a “Stakeholders Analysis” consisting of Customers, Competitors, Company (which includes executives, investors, and employees), and Community (which includes complements, collaborators, special interest groups, the government, the news media, etc.).

As you can see, Customers are just one part of the equation. That said, I have ALWAYS endorsed doing customer research — I teach it extensively in my courses. But what I oppose is customer centricity, which is a single-minded focus on customers. Sometimes I argue that customer opinions should be completely disregarded. Focus groups are notorious for having rejected “Seinfeld,” the minivan, telephone answering machines, Red Bull, and Absolut vodka’s brilliantly successful marketing campaign.

As for your anecdotal evidence from a reality show, that just proves you have to consider your investors when developing your product. By the way, investors and entrepreneurs are often wrong, which is why 9 out of 10 startups fail. Even extremely customer centric startups fail.

If you aren’t sick of me already, you should read my other post on customer-centricity: “A Side Order of Spaghetti: Why Listening to Customers is Nothing New — or even Necessary.”

By: Peter Rodgers

Peter Rodgers — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:35:02 +0000

The problem with this little rant against the 4 Cs and, in particular, the inclusion of “customer” instead of “product” is that it seems to be based on a load of rubbish on Wikipedia.

What Bob Lauterborn actually proposed back in 1990 in a brief article in “Advertising Age” was that the 4 Cs be: consumer wants and needs, cost to satisfy, convenience to buy, and communication. As explained by Lauterborn, these are quite different from the erroneous Cs explained on Wikipedia.

See: http://rlauterborn.com/pubs/pdfs/4_Cs.pdf

Marketing is supposed to be customer-focused rather than product-focused and the problem with the 4 Ps is that they start with “product”.

Although the principles behind the 4 Ps are fundamental, there is nothing wrong with renaming them in a way that reminds us that we should be focusing on satisfying customers wants and needs rather than on what product we can make.

Freddy’s Comment: I agree — the 4C’s on Wikipedia are a load of rubbish, but they were developed in the late ’80s by Northwestern University Professor Don Schultz for his IMC framework, which is otherwise quite brilliant.

And it is wrong to change a framework to focus completely on customers, since customers are just one small part of the equation. Esteemed marketing strategists Jack Trout and Al Ries point out in “Marketing Warfare” that, in many markets, it’s more important to focus on your competition, since consumers usually don’t know what they want or need. (Most focus groups reveal that consumers want more features for less money, and tend to reject innovation.) Apple disdains consumer research — it is a very product-oriented company, and it appears to be doing quite well with that approach. Dell, on the other hand, is very customer centric, letting consumers customize their computers and giving them a lot of computing power for less money; however, Dell’s profitability, market cap and — yes — customer loyalty are far lower than Apple’s.

In addition, with growing trends in social responsibility and green marketing, it’s important to consider the community’s reaction to whatever you do, even though many in that community might not even be your customers. Consider animal activists — who are vegetarians — exposing illegal practices at farms and ranches, or labor unions campaigning against Walmart. Ignore them at your peril.

There’s nothing wrong with thinking about customers — every company should do so. But to say that marketing is supposed to be customer focused is just one perspective. And to change an entire framework to focus on only one part of the market is naive and potentially disastrous.

By: Jeff Ullrich

Jeff Ullrich — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 08:07:43 +0000

I’m a new reader and I really enjoy your topic choices, style and stance. Thanks for sharing.