The 4Ps marketing mix (McCarthy) and the purple cow (Godin)

A differentiation strategy succeeds only when customers can recognise, access and value the difference. McCarthy’s marketing mix tests the commercial system around an offer; Godin’s purple-cow idea tests whether the offer and its story are remarkable enough to earn attention.

When to use it

• Use these ideas to examine the marketing consequences of a profit-growth option, especially a new segment, changed price or differentiated offer.

Origins

E. Jerome McCarthy organised the marketing mix into product, place, price and promotion during the nineteen-sixties. The framework distilled a broader marketing-mix tradition into a memorable planning device. Seth Godin later used the metaphor of a purple cow to argue that safe, ordinary offers become invisible in crowded markets: the difference must be worth noticing and discussing.

The two ideas are complementary. The purple cow raises the standard for distinctiveness; the 4Ps determine whether that distinction is delivered through a commercially coherent system.

What it is

McCarthy’s proposition is simple: offer the right product, make it available in the right place, charge an appropriate price and support it with effective promotion. A strong decision in three areas does not rescue failure in the fourth.

The wrong place prevents willing customers from buying. An excessive price suppresses demand, while a price that is too low may generate volume without an adequate margin. Weak promotion leaves even a relevant, available and fairly priced offer unknown. An early self-publishing example illustrates the interaction: Backing U! was offered at US$24.95 through Barnes & Noble and Amazon, but insufficient promotion contributed to poor sales.

Godin’s purple cow adds a sharper question: is there anything in the offer or customer experience that people would consider genuinely remarkable? Distinction need not mean novelty for its own sake. It should solve a meaningful problem or create an experience that the intended audience values enough to choose and, ideally, recommend.

The 4Ps marketing mix

How to use it

For each growth option, work through the mix and then test it as a whole.

Product or service

• Does it deliver what the target customer actually needs?
• Which features, sizes, colours or functions would improve that outcome at an acceptable cost?
• Should the range be simplified, rebranded, repackaged or bundled?
• Which competitor practices are worth learning from, and where can the offer be meaningfully different?

Place

• Is the offer available where the target customer normally buys this category, in sufficient quantity and at the required service level?
• What inventory, transport and channel-margin implications follow?
• Should specialist stores, catalogues, digital channels or direct sales supplement existing distribution?
• How will the choice affect the sales force and partners?

Price

• Which customer benefits create value, and how much of that value can the business capture?
• How sensitive is demand to a price change? See The price elasticity of demand (Marshall).
• How will the change affect positioning, margin and likely competitor responses?

Promotion

• Which message best expresses the customer benefit and the remarkable difference?
• How should the budget balance broad-reach channels—press, television, radio, outdoor, internet and social media—with narrow, sales-intensive personal contact?
• Which intermediate activities offer the right balance of reach, credibility and selling time?

The Promotion Pyramid developed for management-consulting services in the early nineteen-nineties can help organise those options from broad, time-efficient communication to focused, high-contact selling.

Finally, pressure-test the complete mix. Will the intended customer receive a valued product in an accessible place at a credible price, understand why it is distinctive and have a clear reason to act?

Top practical tip

Review every profit-growth option through all four elements, then identify the one customer-valued feature that makes the complete proposition worth noticing.

Top pitfall

Do not use the 4Ps as a producer-led checklist or confuse novelty with value. Distinction matters only when the target customer cares about it.

Further reading

McCarthy, E.J. (nineteen sixty) Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin.

Godin, S. (two thousand and three) Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable. New York: Portfolio.