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Although the term "marketing mix" was not used until 1964 by
Borden, its origins can be traced to a study conducted by the
Harvard Business School Bureau of Business Research of marketing
expenses of food manufacturers in order to establish if there were
any common relationships in the expenses of marketing functions in
a sample of companies. According to Borden the success of
marketing management depended on understanding market forces
and on skill in devising and maintaining a suitable mix of marketing
activities. He drew up two checklists listing on one hand all
elements of a marketing programme considered to be important
together with respective policies and procedures, and on the other
hand market forces and determinants considered to have a bearing
on the mix. Essentially the marketer had to ensure the firm's
resources were being used to get the best fit between the product
offering and customer satisfaction as a result of understanding how
each checklist had a bearing on the other. In 1975 McCarthy took
Borden's first list and presented it in a simpler more concise way: as
the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion) - a term which is
commonly used today.

 

  
 

Individual components of the marketing mix are referred to as
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  and are as follows:

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 : developing the right product or mix of products to

satisfy the needs of target market(s),
›c ž
 : setting the right price for the target market,
›c ž  : making the right product available to the target
market and,
›c ž
 
: informing, persuading or reminding the target
market about the product itself, how much it costs and its
availability.

The task of marketing mix management demands creativity on the

marketing manager's part to combine interrelated and
interdependent marketing activities in an effective and efficient
manner. At all times attention should be paid to ensure that the
elements of the mix are consistent with one another (ie there
should be
 
across the elements), which should result in a
synergistic effect, whereby the effect of all the elements on the mix
as a whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts. Once
formulated, a mix will need to be continually reviewed so that

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adjustments are made, where appropriate, to reflect changes in the
marketing environment and buyers' needs over time.
For a marketing mix to be effective, it should possess the following
four key characteristics:

‡ match customer needs (in terms of both economic and

psychological choice criteria),
‡ create a competitive advantage
‡ be well-blended and,
‡ match corporate resources.



Although the 4Ps is marketing's most widely popularised conceptual
framework it has been criticised on the grounds of being too
simplistic, strategically weak and not suitable for industrial
marketing or services marketing.

Booms and Bitner (1981) extended the 4Ps to 7Ps for services
marketing (by adding  
,  
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and  
).
Nowadays although the 4Ps provides a useful framework for
marketing decision-making, the other 3Ps should also be considered 
for services where the distinguishing characteristics of services (ie
intangibility, inseparability of production and consumption,
variability and perishability) make it more difficult for a firm to have
a competitive edge than would be the case for consumer goods
marketing.
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