What's New About Strategic Marketing?
Respondents to my column about the tenets of new strategic marketing by and large projected the view that new strategic marketing, as propounded by the authors of the new book, Marketing Moves: A New Approach to Profits, Growth and Renewal, by Philip Kotler, Suvit Maesincee, and Dipak C. Jain (Harvard Business School Publishing, 2002) is a fact in many organizations today. It can be summed up by the question, "What's new?"
Karl Hansen commented, "New Marketing is just another way to help people try to understand and define the role of marketing." Lee Vargas-Bianchi added, "I do think we need to advance...marketing concepts beyond the 4 Ps, but ultimately, didn't they imply to a certain extent what the authors now mean by 'value'?"
Perhaps we should be encouraged that the ideas excerpted from Marketing Moves (always at the risk of doing violence to the depth of the authors' arguments) raised so few eyebrows. |
James Heskett |
What seems to many to be new is the Internet. Comments Thomas Rector, "...the 4 Ps remain valideven in the Internet age. ...'interactivity' provides the best opportunity to fine-tune the positioning (and sometimes the tangible features) of the product." He concurs with Balu Rajagopal who wrote, "The marketing 4 Ps are still a valid framework but the Internet has added a new dimensioninteractivity. ... If there is a case to be made for a new '5P' framework then the fifth 'P' would be a 'Partner.' By 'Partner' I mean both the customers (who help define the value) as well as the enabling partners (who help in delivering the value)."
Perhaps we should be encouraged that the ideas excerpted from Marketing Moves (always at the risk of doing violence to the depth of the authors' arguments) raised so few eyebrows. Comments from readers of this column suggest that marketing has, in practice, moved beyond the product development, promotion, pricing, and distribution activities that defined the field five decades ago. Alternatively, the extent to which the Internet cuts across organizational boundaries and fuses various functions of a firm together (as well as a firm with its customers, suppliers, and partners) may suggest that marketing as we knew it has become so identified with the development and implementation of Internet-fueled strategies that it is losing its identify as a function. What do you think?