1. Read text 2. Text 2. The Marketing Mix

Having been through the overall process of marketing planning, marketers then need to prepare the short-term operational plan which will enable the company to achieve its long-term goals and objectives in terms of improved market share, sales volume, profitability and so on. This operational plan consists mainly of the tactics needed to implement the marketing plan, together with sales forecasts and estimates of the likely budgets and timescales needed.

How do companies go about achieving their marketing objectives? It is widely accepted that the key factor determining success in the marketplace is the ability to satisfy consumer needs and wants profitably. To this end, the strategies adopted by marketers aimed at maximizing consumer satisfaction revolve around the key factors of product, price, place and promotion. These four elements make up what is commonly known as the marketing mix or the four Ps'. The elements of the mix can be combined in different ways just as the ingredients of a cake can be varied in different recipes.

Marketers can expect to have little or no control over factors in the external marketing environment such as political, demographic, technological and social forces . However, marketers obviously do have an influence on internal decisions concerning the nature of the product and the way it is priced, distributed and promoted. As marketing tools, the attraction of four Ps therefore stems from the fact that these are the only variables which are capable of being directly manipulated by marketers. As Philip Kotler has pointed out, 'The marketing mix is the set of controllable variables that firms can use to influence the buyer's response.'

A marketing-orientated approach involves providing consumers with a total offer - a package of benefits which caters for their needs and wants, based on a balanced combination of all four elements. As a whole, the marketing mix provides a potentially far more powerful tool than the sum of its component parts. Used in isolation, each element of the mix is relatively ineffective. For example, sales of an expensive product will be reduced if the high price is not reinforced by other elements of the mix, for instance, if the quality of the pro­duct is poor, it is sold through places like discount outlets and is promoted by a 'down-market' advertising campaign. Where the balance of the mix is inconsis­tent, as in this case, the customer is presented with a disjointed image of the product.

If the marketing effort is not integrated from the outset, the full sales potential of a product may never be realized. An uncoordinated effort will almost certainly result in a substantial waste of company resources. It is pointless wasting advertising expenditure on an inferior product, for example.

Marketers need, therefore, to ensure that the four key elements are mixed together in order to present a coordinated offering to the customer, consisting of the right product, at the right price, in the right place and supported by the right promotion. The four elements are also inter-dependent, which means that if one element is changed in any way, it will automatically have a knock-on effect on the others in the mix.

It is essential, therefore, that the elements of the mix are managed as an integrated whole. This does not mean of course that the way in which the elements are combined should remain static, although some degree of con­tinuity is obviously important in order to maintain customer loyalty in the long term. The optimum combination of the elements is in any case bound to change as the product moves through the different stages of its life cycle. In addition, the mix may need to be altered as factors like economic, social and technical changes alter the level of demand.

In recent years some authors have suggested that the four Ps should be extended to include other aspects of marketing such as packaging. Whilst the case for factors such as packaging is less clear-cut, there is a growing body of support for the inclusion of people as a fifth P. The standard of customer ser­vice provided is increasingly recognized as a key factor in determining a com­pany's success or failure. Authors like Peters and Waterman pin-pointed the way in which a company's employees behave as the main factor distinguishing their successful American companies - a finding that has since been confirmed by other studies in Britain and elsewhere.