Contemporary Approaches to the Marketing Mix

Introduction

“The marketing mix” was first brought out to describe a pool of marketing elements, from which marketing managers can choose to create distinct marketing strategies (Borden, 1964). This idea was further advocated by McCarthy (1960), who narrowed the options down to an essential framework consisted of four Ps, namely Product, Place, Promotion and Price (McCarthy, 1960, pp. 37-47). It has received wide acceptance that 4Ps are synonymous to the marketing mix, due to its easy-to-apply and mnemonic natures (Constantinides, 2006).

However, whether or not 4Ps can fit in contemporary marketing practices is under debate since the 1980s (Goi, 2009). It becomes a big issue for field practitioners to decide if they should turn to other paradigms for marketing implementations (Grönroos, 1994).

To address this question in the essay, several adaptations of the marketing mix will be reviewed; based on these former studies, the relationship between three kinds of contemporary marketing approaches: relationship marketing, service marketing and industrial marketing, will be thoroughly discussed. At last, a brief conclusion will be drawn.

The adaptation of the marketing mix to the evolving industry

The 4Ps model has been said to be out of date for several reasons: first reason comes from the structure, the easy-to-use framework turns out to be a limitation, it refrains companies from using other elements in the marketing mix (Yudelson, 1999). Thus revisions focus on adding new Ps were proposed. For example, Judd (1987) added “people” as the fifth P, refers to the human resource a company owns, that can be used to differentiate a company from its competitors. On the other hand, Kotler (1986) suggested adding two more Ps- power an...

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