What Is the Marketing Mix?

Neil H. Borden of Harvard Business School used the phrase in his teaching and writing. In a 1964 text he wrote that he had been doing so for about fifteen years. He took the idea from his colleague James Culliton, whose 1948 study of marketing costs described the business executive as a "mixer of ingredients". If executives mix ingredients, what they design is a mix: the marketing mix.

Borden did not talk about four Ps. His list had twelve elements: product planning, pricing, branding, channels of distribution, personal selling, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, and fact finding and analysis. Next to it he set four market forces that shape the mix: the behaviour of consumers, of the trade, of competitors and of government. The list of elements says what the company can decide. The list of forces says what it has to reckon with.

The 4P model works with four levers. Rafiq and Ahmed, in a 1995 paper comparing marketing mix frameworks, call them "McCarthy's 4Ps": - Product: what is sold, with what quality, range, design, brand and service. - Price: how much is charged, with what discounts, terms and margins. - Place: through which channels the product reaches the customer, from the company's own shop to a reseller. - Promotion: how the offer is made known, through advertising, personal selling, sales promotion and public relations.

For services, Booms and Bitner proposed a mix of seven Ps in 1981, according to the same paper by Rafiq and Ahmed. The three extra Ps are participants, physical evidence and process: the people involved in the service, what the customer can see before buying something intangible, and how the service is delivered.

The marketing mix is a different thing from marketing mix modeling, even though both carry the word "mix". The marketing mix is the list of decisions. Marketing mix modeling is a statistical technique: it relates time series of advertising investment and sales to estimate how much each channel contributes and how to allocate budget.

Before touching the four Ps, a company needs to know which target audience it is addressing and what value proposition it is making to them. The four Ps are how that proposition is kept in the market.

Each lever is then decided with an eye on the others. An invented example: a specialty coffee roaster wants to sell whole beans online. If it picks a single-origin coffee and packs it in bags with a one-way valve (product), it can charge more than the supermarket does (price). That price calls for outlets where the customer can read about origin and roast, such as its own online shop and cafés, rather than a shelf between private-label brands (place). And the communication has to explain the origin, with search content and newsletters to past buyers, because a discount poster would contradict the price (promotion).

A basic mistake is to decide each P on its own. Borden described it in 1964: a problem that seems to lie in one part of the mix has to be thought through with constant regard for the effect on the other parts, because marketing needs integration. In the example, if the sales team runs a steep discount to close the quarter, the price no longer fits the product or the communication, and a customer who paid full price has a reason to wait for the next sale. The second mistake runs the other way: treating promotion as if it were the whole of marketing. Borden made the point about advertising: its value depends on the place it takes in the combination of product, price, selling and distribution. A good campaign will not save a product that fails its promise, or a channel where the customer cannot find it.

In digital marketing the four Ps are still there, with different tools. Place includes the online shop, marketplaces and apps. Promotion includes SEO, SEA and email.

The marketing mix forces you to see marketing as a whole. Without it, each department optimises its own lever, and decisions that are reasonable one by one can together contradict the value proposition.

It also works as a checklist. Borden describes the mix chart as a reminder of the areas to think about when a marketing problem comes up. If sales fall, the chart leads you through the four Ps and the market forces before more money goes into advertising. Maybe the price no longer fits, or a channel has lost weight.

And it gives a frame for measurement. In marketing mix modeling, price and promotions enter the model as variables next to the investment in each channel. A mix documented with dates makes it possible to separate the effect of a price cut from that of a campaign.

The model has limits. In the survey Rafiq and Ahmed published in 1995, marketing academics in the UK and Europe showed a high degree of dissatisfaction with the 4Ps. According to the two authors, the criticism has led to different mixes being put forward for different contexts, such as the 7Ps.

• Define the target audience and the value proposition before deciding any single P.
• Check every change to one P against what it demands from the other three.
• Write the mix down with dates so it can be measured later.
• Review the mix when the market forces change: consumers, trade, competitors or regulation.

• Deciding price, product, place and promotion in teams that do not talk to each other.
• Calling only advertising and promotions "marketing".
• Cutting the price to win volume without checking whether product and channel can carry it.
• Confusing the marketing mix, a set of decisions, with marketing mix modeling, a measurement method.