Who doesn't remember the basic lesson from Marketing 101, the four Ps—which I don't even need to enumerate? They were based on concepts of a marketing mix developed in the 1950s and popularized for marketing instructors by Jerry McCarthy in 1962. Now the three authors of the book Marketing Moves, Philip Kotler, Dipak Jain, and Savit Maesincee, ask us to transform the thinking we explored in good old 101. The ideas gain added impact because the team of authors is led by Kotler, perhaps the most widely read marketing academic of the past three decades.
| I basically agree to the premise that Internet has transformed the way we transact, but whether it really impacts the way people purchase is a point in question. |
|
— Praveen HCL Technologies |
Basically, we are asked to put aside the strategic marketing tenets of the past when marketing was done by a marketing department and focused on the "interruption" of customer buying behaviors, the need to acquire new customers, immediate transactions, and the treatment of marketing costs as expenses. Instead we are asked to think of marketing as the work of exploring, creating, and delivering customer value. This work focuses on gaining the "permission" of customers to sell to them, customer retention and loyalty, the capture of lifetime value, and marketing expenditures as investments. Everything happens faster. And, among other things, product design is shifted from the manufacturer to the customer.
Many of the examples that the authors cite are from the world of the Internet and e-commerce. And yet, one can't help but ask the following questions: To what extent is the "new" marketing new? How much of it would have evolved regardless of the emergence of the Internet? And how has it really changed the life of marketing managers? What do you think?