Evolving Marketing basics: 4 V's for 4 C's through 4 P's

4 P's constitute the oldest of marketing basics as described by Kotler. Over the time, these 4 P's has evolved into 4 C's and now its time for 4 V's.

New 4 V's of Marketing are described below: 

1. VALIDITY for Consumers in terms of Products

Initial product approach aimed at developing the product and marketing it well to achieve maximum sales.

Consumer approach brought in the importance of consumer insight and feedback about his needs and expectations about the product. This became essential with so many players coming into market and leaving large number of choices with consumer. Thus Consumer Satisfaction became the buzzword.

With evolving technologies and advances in industry, average product life cycle has decreased. Thus it becomes essential to ensure that the products designed to ensure consumer satisfaction remain valid at the launch of the product.

2. VALUE against  Cost incurred for the Price of product.

Value marketing insists on focussing at delivering the right value to customer. Value is what customer pays for. For instance, Brand value is something for which customers are ready to pay premium. Indians (or India rightly described as a country of youth for coming years) would definitely give more importance to higher standard of living. Hence marketers need to give due importance to value for consumers.

3. Venue that gives consumer the Convenience in easy availabilty of products at right Place

A distribution channel of providing just a place to buy is no longer competitive. Over the time, convenience for consumers has become important and marketers have been establishing more distribution points to reach the consumer. 

The term Venue holds a broader meaning here. Venue is not only providing the product at right place. Venue also considers all the points of contact between customers and retailers, where marketers can get the required information and feedback from consumers. 

Venue also justifies the supply of products through electronic platform and direct selling, as they don't have any brick & mortar as a place to provide their products. Pizza delivery by Domino's and Pizza Hut have revolutionized the  food market.

4. Vogue through efficient two way Communication for proper Promotion

Vogue (meaning Popular acceptance) is the need of hour for all marketers in this competitive world. It requires more than just getting a message across and 2 ways communications. It ensures that messages and advertisements are not only communicated well, but they must be well accepted by the people. For such things, interactive phone and websites may be launched to get people associated with your brand. Like Reckitt Benckiser recently organized a competition inviting people to use their skills and design ideas and advertisements that could be of use to Reckitt. This way one gets the brand more closer to end user.

No doubt these marketing tools have evolved from 4 P's to 4 C's, but the basic still lies in providing the best product and service to customer in such a way that customer gets satisfied and firm earns business.

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Vivek Bhatia

The Ingenious Case of Salesman Shrimaan

Having gone through the perfect example of Apple iPod, as how can proper marketing help a product sell itself? Now coming to the basic concepts of marketing (as given by marketing guru Kotler), viz. STP (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning) and 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place and Promotion); let us see how these concepts hold true in case of a small scale retailer.

It was a rainy day and I was standing at a shop waiting for rain to stop. I got to see several customers of all sort come and go. Doing nothing, I observed them (thanks to the beautiful girl who shifted my attention from rain outside to inside the shop).



"One young guy (college student) came and what I could make out from their friendly conversation was that he was someone close to the salesmen. He asked for certain products including a deodorant, face wash and few more things. As everyone else does, the boy asked for the price of different brands of deodorants.


Salesmen asked him not to worry about the price, and on being asked he pushed forward a new brand of deodorant that had just arrived in the market. The boy looked a bit confused but agreed to buy that deodorant on being insisted by the retailer. When it came to pay money, he found the product cost to be around 10% higher than the normal deodorant cost. The boy took the product and went but felt cheated. This happens with many people, not only youth but also the mature men and women."


Above example brings into light the common Indian culture of socializing and befriending all. Retailers exploit it by getting customers into confidence, and selling them product of their own choice. Sometimes, retailers would push the product which otherwise does not sell and at other times the product which gives them maximum return. This reduces the impact of targeting and positioning being done by the company.

Company may segment and target different segments, but a common retailer like our salesmen shrimaan serves all sorts of customers. He also stocks goods of different brands. So does not this lessen the effect of segmenting and targeting?

The answer to this question is positioning. Positioning is done along the guidelines of Marketing Mix of 4 P’s. It helps your product differentiate itself from the rest of the products. 4P’s: Product, Price, Place, Promotion specifies the various aspects of the value proposition being provided by the manufacturer to consumers. i) It signifies the characteristics of the product, ii) it decides upon the pricing of the product/service, iii) it specifies the distribution mode and channel and places where the product has to be made available, iv) By Promotion, it means spreading awareness and attracting customers by advertising, public relations, contests, discounts etc.

Thus a company tries its best to reach people and position themselves well against their competitors, but the way retailer/salesmen interacts with the customers has major influence on customer’s behavior that can even nullify marketing efforts of product manufacturer.

Another instance, once I found a retailer promoting a brand more strongly than others. That brand did not give him more margins but he was pushing it more just because it was a product manufactured by his close friend.


Does this mean, salesmen have more importance than the marketing basics of STP and 4P’s? What do you think?

The solution to above problem would be to keep retailers in confidence, associate with them and motivate them with rewards. Even mystery shopping can help determine retailers view about your products and keep a check on the selling behavior.

Marketing-Making selling superfluous

A layman may define marketing as an art of selling a product, service or performance. Though the end motive is selling and earning profit, Marketing is much more than it. It includes large number of processes ranging from acquiring or manufacturing a product, positioning1 it to the target segment2, making it available to the end user through intermediaries (retailers, distributors and franchisees) and post-sale support and purchase behavior.

The main aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. Marketing is basically identifying human needs and positioning your product/service as a means to satisfy that need. A good marketing plan helps you understand the human nature so well that your product/service would sell itself to the customer. This requires analyzing the market scenario identifying marketing opportunities, selecting target markets, designing marketing strategies, developing marketing programs, and managing market effort.

For instance, when Apple launched it iPod Nano digital music player, it need not do hard selling. There was a great demand and manufacturers were flooded with orders because they had designed the right product. Ever since the launch of basic iPod model, Apple has come up with number of products upgrade with added features and each of its products has been a success.


But, how do they decide upon adding a particular feature to an existing product? Again Marketing comes to help. A good Marketing effort requires staying in touch with customers needs, identifying the new possible aspects that you as an organisation can target and develop new innovative products and services.

There is STP and Marketing mix, which forms the core of marketing. Their meaning and relevance to Indian market would be discussed soon.

1Positioning refers to the process of creating an image of your product, brand in the mind of the target customer. It gives the buyer clue about the features of your product and how would it satisfy his needs.

2Target Segment: It refers to a section of people that are seen by a marketing organisation as prospective buyers of their product. So, the marketing program focuses on positioning their product for this particular segment.