That is, products, prices, promotions and places.
Professor Jerome from the University of Michigan? E. jerome McCarthy put forward in 1960 that "its greatness lies in that it simplifies marketing and is easy to remember and spread".
Products include core products, physical products and extended products. Products in a broad sense can be tangible entities or intangible services, technologies, knowledge or wisdom.
There are many methods to set the price, such as competition comparison method, cost additive process method, profit target method and market gap method. The goal of these methods is to make products exchangeable commodities. Enterprises aim at profit, so pricing should take into account both sales efficiency and enterprise benefits. Price war is a pricing and competitive strategy, but low price does not always work. Once, a friend faced different purchase options for the same product of Olay in two different businesses, one was full price sale, and the other was 20% discount sale. The result is to choose the original price. Information asymmetry makes the price contain too much additional speculative information, such as quality, duration, authenticity, quality, utility and so on. The price is not only related to the product itself, but also to the additional connotation and value of the brand, to the relationship between supply and demand in the market, and to the reputation of the selected shopping place.
The traditional promotion methods are personnel promotion, advertising, research activities and promotion. These methods are widely used in the marketing process.
Channel is the sales path of products from producers to consumers' terminals. Ordinary consumer goods will pass through agents, wholesalers, shopping malls or retail stores. B2C mode also includes telephone direct selling, TV direct selling, network direct selling, personnel direct selling and specialty store direct selling. The direct selling model greatly reduces the intermediate links from manufacturers to buyers, and transfers the intermediate profits to consumers or serves as compensation for the extra expenses generated by the new marketing model. B2B mode can also adopt the direct sales from manufacturer to manufacturer or the intermediate sales mode of selecting agents.
After 4P, due to the rapid development of service industry in 1970s, some scholars added a fifth "P", namely "person". Because of the importance of packaging in the marketing of packaged consumer goods, "packaging" has become another "P"; In 1970s, kotler, the "father of marketing management", put forward two P's when he emphasized "big marketing", namely publications and politics. When the marketing strategic plan is very important, kotler put forward the 4P process in the strategic plan, that is, research (exploration) and subdivision (subdivision), priority (priority) and positioning (positioning), and the marketing mix evolved into 12p ... However, as a basic marketing tool, 4P still plays a very important role.
4C theory
"Although 4Ps have swept through for nearly half a century, in the 1990s, with the increasingly prominent consumer personalization, media differentiation and information overload, the traditional 4Ps were gradually challenged by 4Cs." In essence, the starting point of 4Ps thinking is the enterprise center, that is, what products the business operators want to produce, what profits they expect to make, how to set corresponding prices, how to spread and promote products, and how to choose the sales path. This ignores the interest characteristics of customers as buyers, and customers are the real object of the whole marketing service. The emergence of the new customer-centered marketing concept makes the customer-oriented 4C theory emerge as the times require. 1990, American scholar Professor Lauterbourne put forward 4C theory corresponding to 4P theory.
The core of 4C is customer strategy. Customer strategy is also the basic strategic principle of many successful enterprises, for example, Wal-Mart's basic corporate values "The customer is always right". The basic principle of 4C's is to take customers as the center, from products to how to realize customers' needs, to plan and design enterprise marketing activities.
Demand), from price to comprehensive balance of the cost that customers are willing to pay, from one-way information transmission of promotion to two-way communication with customers, from the flow of products through channels to the convenience of customers' purchase.
Customer demand can be divided into explicit demand and potential demand. The explicit need is to cater to the market, and the potential need is to guide the market. The primary task of marketers is to study the needs of customers, find out their real needs, and then formulate corresponding demand strategies, which will affect the production process of enterprises. Due to the intensification of market competition, customers show consumption fatigue for homogenized products, and moderate innovation is a competitive weapon to guide and meet customers' needs.
The level of customer demand is also one of the bases of market segmentation. What kind of demand level to meet directly determines the choice of target market positioning. According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, customers' needs have developed from basic product needs to higher psychological needs. Therefore, enterprises should not only make products, but also make brands and make a living. By creating brand core values, we can create new lifestyles and meet customers' needs in social identity and quality of life.
Customer cost is the sum of all expenses incurred by customers in the process of purchasing and using products. Price setting is purely product-oriented, and customer cost includes not only product price, but also time cost, learning cost, opportunity cost, use conversion cost and the cost of purchasing additional accessories or related products. The comprehensive consideration of these costs is more conducive to the design of related products according to the characteristics of target customer groups to meet the real needs of customers.
Customer communication first makes it clear that the enterprise communication promotion strategy is customer-oriented rather than enterprise-oriented or competition-oriented. In reality, many enterprises make promotion strategies based on competition, and as a result, they fall into the confusion of vicious competition. Customer orientation can make enterprises aware of the differences in competition and cultivate their core competitiveness. Customer communication also emphasizes the whole process of customer participation and interaction, and realizes information transmission and emotional contact in the process of participation and interaction. On the one hand, communication should choose the media channels that target customers often contact. On the other hand, due to the explosion of social information, consumers are exposed to a wide range of information sources every day, so one-way information transmission will be inefficient due to the filtering of information received by consumers. Communication emphasizes customer participation, so that customers can fully receive and remember information in the process of interaction. At present, experiential marketing refers to customers' understanding of the fit between products and their own needs, discovering the value of products, invisibly understanding the brand culture, and achieving psychological touch in a subtle way. In the process of experience, the voice of customers is accepted by enterprises and becomes the next direction of innovation.
Coca-cola can be bought everywhere, such as car sales in real estate, door-to-door pick-up service provided by driving schools, door-to-door service of food delivery in fast food restaurants ... these are all designed to facilitate the arrival of products. The goal of customer convenience is to improve the probability of product selection by shortening the physical distance and psychological distance between customers and products.
4R theory
With the development of the times, 4C theory with customer strategy as the core also shows its limitations. When customer needs conflict with social principles, customer strategy is also inappropriate. For example, in the context of advocating a conservation-oriented society, should we meet the luxury needs of some customers? This is not only an enterprise marketing problem, but also a social moral problem. Similarly, the construction of villas also deviates from the strategic requirements of the country to save energy and land. So 200 1, is Don in America? e? Schultz (Don
E
Schultz), and put forward a new 4R theory of relationship, austerity, correlation and reward, "focusing on establishing a new relationship between enterprises and customers in a more effective way".
4I theory
In the network age, the traditional marketing classics have been difficult to apply. Consumers rule the world, the media is the emperor in the traditional communication era, and you are the new king in the network communication era! In the era of traditional media, information dissemination is "church-like", and information flows linearly from top to bottom, so consumers can only passively accept it. In the era of network media, information dissemination is "market-oriented" and information is multi-directional and interactive. The sounds are diverse, noisy and different from each other. Internet media has brought explosive growth of all kinds of "self-media". With the help of blogs, forums, IM and SNS, every grassroots consumer has his own "mouth" and "ears". Faced with these "long tails of the uprising", traditional marketing methods such as "hunting" will become "fishing": marketers need to learn to stew attractive "bait" with "creative fire" and brand information will be cleverly packaged into "hooks". How can we complete this transformation? Ogilvy's network integrated marketing 4I principle gives the best guidance.
Four I principles of network integrated marketing: interest principle, interest principle, interaction principle and personality principle.
Personality principle.
interesting
Principle of interest: gossip is the passport of the public, and steamed bread is the epitaph of commitment. When Sister Big S of Furong became popular on the Internet, more and more information was put on the "pan-entertainment mask", and an era of entertainment to death came. The essence of Internet in China is entertainment. In the "entertainment circle" of the Internet, advertising and marketing must also be entertaining and interesting. When we lose, we say to consumers, "Are you willing to listen, are you willing to listen, or are you willing to listen and never insist?" Obviously, it is an effective way to attract fish by making some interesting and entertaining "sugar-coated" bait and cleverly wrapping the hook of marketing information in interesting plots. "Great network marketing, he has interesting blood flowing in him! He is not a blunt advertisement, he is not a blunt advertisement! The entertainment factor is possessed by his soul! "
interest
Principle of interest: Yes, interest! The world is bustling for profit, and the world is bustling for profit. The network is a river and lake flooded with information and services, and marketing activities can't provide benefits for the target audience, so it is bound to be difficult to move. Turn yourself into a consumer and ask yourself: "I want to participate in this marketing activity, why?" Hey! "
But what I want to emphasize here is that the "benefits" provided to consumers in online marketing are more extensive, and the first mapped material benefits in our minds are only a part of them, and may also include.
1, information, consultation
The highest state of advertising is that there is no advertising, only information. Consumers resist advertisements, but they need information about the products they want. Direct advertising is likely to be rejected, but it becomes information provided by consumers; Faced with the benefits of free, consumers' acceptance will naturally be greatly improved.
2. Function or service
3, psychological satisfaction, or honor
4. Actual material/monetary benefits
5, ... when you fill it out, I believe you can find more!
interaction
Interaction principle: Another important feature that distinguishes online media from traditional media is its interaction. If this usp cannot be fully exploited and utilized, the old wine in new bottles will directly follow the traditional advertising method, which is tantamount to buying gifts and returning pearls. In addition, online media has lost the "compulsion" of traditional media at the communication level. Such "fostering strengths and avoiding weaknesses" and one-way announcement marketing are definitely not the future of online marketing. Only by fully tapping the interactivity of the network and making full use of the characteristics of the network to communicate with consumers can we make full use of our strengths and circumvent our weaknesses, so that the function of online marketing can be brought into full play.
Don't let consumers simply accept information. The progress of digital media technology allows us to interact on the marketing platform with extremely low cost and great convenience. Consumers can fully participate in the interaction and creation of online marketing. The hand-made pottery in the pottery bar is precious because it melts into your own sweat. Similarly, consumers' personal participation in the interactive and creative marketing process will engrave a deeper brand mark in the cerebral cortex. Taking consumers as the main body and initiating equal interaction with brands can bring unique competitive advantages to marketing. Future brands will be semi-finished products, half of which will be decided by consumers' experience and participation. Of course, it is very important for marketers to find ways to guide and lead the interaction between them.
individual
Personality principle: You have been nailed to an unbounded height, so the reflection of your tall figure in marketing is me! individual
Therefore, personality plays a prominent role in online marketing! Compared with "everyone in the street is wearing it", "
This is the only one in Beijing, especially for you! ",you will understand that exclusivity and individuality are obviously easier to capture the hearts of consumers. Because of personality, so accurate, because, so attractive. Personalized marketing makes consumers feel satisfied with "concentration". Personalized marketing is more attractive to consumers and easy to trigger interaction and purchase behavior. However, in the traditional marketing environment, the cost of "personalized marketing" is very high, and it is difficult to generalize. Few brands taste it very little, just a feast for the rich and powerful. However, in online media, the characteristics of digital traffic make it simple and cheap, and it is possible to subdivide a small group of people, even one person, to achieve one-on-one marketing. God-given opportunity, how can we not take advantage of it?