Any company that is in activity is made up of two essential elements: product and market.For a long time, companies have sought to develop new products that allow them to obtain attractive profit margins and the efforts of this search were generally focused on the product, however Today, attention must be directed mainly to detecting latent needs in the consumer, and producing satisfiers that the market identifies as solutions to their need.
Charles W. Lamben in his book Marketing points to marketing myopia as “the definition of a business in terms of goods and services, rather than in the benefits sought by the consumer”, that is, the business has the product as its starting point and not the consumer's need.
Jerry McCarthy and Philip Kotler proposed more than two decades ago four basic elements that integrated what they called marketing mix or the 4P's - Product, Price, Place and Promotion - and since then these have been the ones that have set the standard in planning However, with the new trends originated by the great changes that the information age, technology and competition have subjected us to, it is convenient to think about the current situation and the variants that could be applied to the famous 4P's..
Bob Lauterborn, director of marketing communications and corporate advertising at International Paper Co., makes a proposal called the 4C's in which he proposes to change the classic approach of McCarthy and Kotler substituting the product for the consumer, the price for the cost, to the market for convenience and promotion by communication.
The product by the consumer. Lauterborn proposes to shift the focus of the product towards the consumer, to seek out consumers and discover their needs; then and not before manufacturing the product to be marketed.
The price for the cost benefit, understand the cost benefit that the consumer needs instead of obsessively worrying about the price, since money - says Lauternborn - is only part of the cost, "What they are selling when they have a business hamburgers are not just hamburgers for a few pesos more or less. It's the cost of the time to drive to where you are, the cost of becoming conscientious about eating meat, versus possibly the cost of guilt for not following the fashions. The value is not greater if the hamburger is larger and is sold at a lower price; it is a complex equation among so many solutions "
The market for convenience, at a time when home delivery services, electronic commerce via the Internet, credit cards and commercial chains are already a significant trend in a segment with significant economic capacity, the search for convenience becomes relevant of the consumer in his transfer to acquire goods or services more than in the easiest or most convenient channels for the company.
The promotion through communication, the massive advertising bombardment has been losing more and more effectiveness in its impacts, it is no longer enough to expose information left and right, but it is important to consider the communication process in the promotion of products, establish relationships in which the information flows in a bidirectional way and consider the consumer not as a prey to be shot, but as an individual with an unmet need and the possibility of establishing a relationship that allows my company to help them satisfy that necessity while achieving the objectives of the organization.
Perhaps rather than replacing the 4P's, it is necessary to consider the approach used and what is the presence of the 4C's within the company, it is important to remember that Stanton in his book Fundamentals of Marketing describes very clearly the approach towards the need for the consumer rather than the product itself:
"The consumer doesn't buy sandpaper, they buy a smooth surface."
"The consumer doesn't buy a 1/2-inch bit, they buy a ½-inch diameter hole."
As long as we do not identify what consumers are actually buying, we will not be able to know what our product really is. Harry Beckwith takes this point in his book Sell the Invisible in which he observes how people who are dedicated to the fast food business used to think that they sold food, then McDonald's emerged - he writes - and he understood that people did not buy hamburgers. People bought an experience; McDonald's was right: restaurants that serve hamburgers are not in the hamburger business.
Most likely the market is not looking for the products offered, it seems that they are looking for something else and the first company to discover what it is will win.
Nobody buys a product per se. What is bought is what the consumer thinks the product or service will do for him, says Robert B. Miller in his book Conceptual Selling.
Perhaps it is time to take a break from the daily bustle of buying and selling and reflect on who is my business directed towards, the product or the customer?
