The marketing mix (the 4Ps)

In one paragraph

Four decisions that together make up how you take something to market. They only work when they agree with each other.

Product — what you actually sell, including quality, range, design, packaging and after-sales service.

Price — what you charge, and the strategy behind it: skimming, penetration, cost-plus, competitive, psychological.

Place — where and how the customer can buy: your own shop, a wholesaler, a retailer, online, a marketplace.

Promotion — how they find out: advertising, PR, social, sales promotion, personal selling.

The integration is the whole point

The mix is not a checklist of four separate decisions. It is one decision expressed four ways, and the elements have to be consistent. A premium product sold cheaply through a discount channel with a clearance advert is four decisions that contradict each other, and the customer reads the cheapest signal.

Change one P and you usually have to change the others. Cut the price and the product, the place and the promotion all have to make sense at the new number.

The 7Ps

Services added three more, because you cannot separate a service from how it is delivered: People (who serves the customer), Process (how the service runs) and Physical evidence (the tangible signals — the premises, the van, the report).

How to actually use it

• Write your four out and look for the one that contradicts the others. That is nearly always where the marketing is leaking.
• For a service business use all seven, because the person delivering it is a bigger part of the product than anything you can put in a brochure.

Where it breaks down

• It is a checklist written from the seller's side. It prompts you to consider price, not to work out what the customer is actually trying to get done.
• It says nothing about which customers to serve. Segmentation and positioning come first; the mix is how you execute the choice.

If you are being examined on it

Do not describe all four generically. Pick the ones that matter for the business in the case and explain how they support each other.

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