A Comparative Analysis of Traditional vs. Modern 4P's Marketing Mix

This essay provides a detailed exploration of the marketing mix, focusing on the traditional and modern interpretations of the 4P's: product, price, place, and promotion. It contrasts the traditional view with Kotler and Keller's updated model, which emphasizes people, processes, programs, and performance. The essay highlights how these elements interact within a business's internal and external environments to drive marketing success. It also discusses the importance of understanding the product life cycle, pricing strategies, promotional methods, and the evolving role of 'place' in the digital age. The modern approach broadens the scope of marketing by integrating internal marketing, employee engagement, and comprehensive marketing programs to align all company activities for optimal performance. Desklib provides access to similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

MARKETING MIX 1
The 4P’s of Markrting
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The 4P’s of Marketing
The 4Ps describe the categories involved in the process of marketing a good or service as
described by the price, the product being marketed, promotion, and the place that is usually
referred to as the market mix. These factors of marketing usually interact with one another in
both the external and internal environment of the business to make the marketing of the product
or service successful. Also, marketing determines the success of a business in a particular
environment considering the competition levels in the market (Lee & Kotler, 2011). Therefore,
as an integral part of the success of a business, marketing entails the process of identifying the
customer needs, the target market for the goods and services, promotion of the products and
services within the market place and consequently applying the goods and services to serve the
market in question as described by the 4P’s (Gordon, 2012). There is a difference in the 4P’s in
the manner in which they are described using the traditional method compared to the Kotler and
Keller’s version of the new 4P’s.
The traditional 4P’s of marketing mix include components such as products, price,
promotion, and place. The product refers to the goods or service that the company has to offer to
its consumers. It is of importance for the company to understand the life cycle of its products to
be able to stay clear of the competition levels in the market (Gordon, 2012). It is the type of the
product that is offered by the company that determines the price it can fetch in the market, the
promotional method to be used, and where to place it within the market. The price as described
by the traditional marketing mix refers to the amount the product can fetch in the market taking
factors like supply costs, discount and competitors’ prices into consideration (Lee & Kotler,
2011). Place as regards to the products of a company can encompass a lot of factors such as the
process of getting the products close to the consumers in the market, placing the product on

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different television ads, and where the product is likely to appear on a web page. The last P in the
traditional marketing mix refers to the promotion of the product using various promotional
strategies to appeal to the potential customers why paying a certain price for the product in
question is worth it.
On the other hand, the new version of Kotler and Keller’s 4P’s include such factors as
people, processes, programs, and performance (Gordon, 2012). Due to the changing times of
digital marketing, such issues as a place do not matter in marketing since people can access the
products on online platforms depending on the way a company positions itself. The aspect of
people in the marketing is described by Kotler and Keller as “internal marketing and the fact that
employees are critical to the marketing success, and thus marketing will only be as good as the
people inside the organization (Lee & Kotler, 2011).” The process followed in reaching the
target customers is also important and should be given prominence in the process of marketing.
As opposed to the traditional marketing mix, the modern mix provides a broader view of the
market, and thus the proposal of the need to include the additional four P’s by Phillip Kotler (Lee
& Kotler, 2011). The programs as described in the new model involves the collation of all the
marketing factors to form one complete program that drives the process of marketing. This new
formula as presented by Kotler and Keller applies to all the company disciplines to facilitate the
alignment of the entire set of company activities.

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References
Gordon, R. (2012). Re-thinking and re-tooling the social marketing mix. Australasian Marketing
Journal (AMJ), 20(2), 122-126.
Lee, N. R., & Kotler, P. (2011). Social marketing: Influencing behaviors for good. SAGE
publications.