Marketing Mix

Marketing Mix Paper

What are the elements of the marketing mix? There are four elements, which are product, place, price, and promotion. Organizations use these four elements of the marketing mix to make a profit on the product or service that they offer. The following will discuss the four p’s of marketing, and describe how each one of the four elements of the marketing mix impacts the development of a specific organizations marketing strategy and tactics.

Four Elements of the Marketing Mix

To begin, the first p in the marketing mix stands for product. Products are the things that organizations sell to people (ABC’s of Small Business, 1999-2003). This area is concerned with creating the right product or service for the target population. The product or service should satisfy the need of the target population. For this reason, it is very important to know the wants and needs of the target population.

The second p in the marketing mix stands for place. “Place is concerned with all the decisions involved in getting the “right” product to the target market’s Place” (Perreault & McCarthy, 2004, Ch 2, Pg 39). This is how an organization gets it product to the customer. There are many different ways of getting a product or service to the customer, so it is important for the organization to know if the customer wants to see or touch it before he or she buys it. The product or service reaches its target population through distribution channels, which are any series of firms or individuals that participate in the flow of products or services from the producer to the consumer.

The third p in the marketing mix stands for promotion. Promotion is telling the target population or others in the channel of distribution about the right product. It includes, advertising, sales promotion, publicity, personal selling, branding, and refers to the various methods of promoting the product, brand, or company (Wikipedia-Marketing, 2008). Promotion can be focused on acquiring new customers or sometimes it is focused on retaining current customers.

The last p stands for price. Marketing managers must also decide the right price of their product or service. “Price setting must consider the kind of competition in the target market and the cost of the whole marketing mix” (Perreault & McCarthy, 2004, Ch 2, Pg 40). The price does not have to be monetary; it can also be what is exchanged for a product or service.