Marketers Frequently Adapt And Change The Well Established Marketing Theoties And Models

Introduction

The business environment is passing through rapid changes due to a major driver of the new economy: on-line technology. Marketing theories and models dominant today are going to be passй tomorrow. In addition, the pure essence of the marketing science is that ought to be adaptive. Borden defines the marketer as a "decider", an "artist", a "mixer of ingredients", who sometimes follows a recipe prepared by others, sometimes prepares her/his own recipe as s/he goes along, sometimes adapts a recipe to the ingredients immediately available and sometimes experiments with or invents ingredients no one else has tried. (Borden, 1964) Thus marketer is constantly adopting different principles to remain market and customer focused. In fact the idea of adaptation comes from nature; a species in order to survive has to evolve. Likewise the fundamental "marketing mix" has advanced, as the elements that make it up, its focus and how it is practiced have changed a great deal over the years.

Marketing Mix in Theory

Marketing mix is a tool organized to aid an organization in reaching its target markets and specified objectives. The model was developed by Borden (Borden, 1964), who first started using the phrase in 1949. The most famous variables are, Product, Price, Promotion and Place, first suggested by McCarthy (McCarthy, 1960), referred to as the four P's. Another set of variables was developed by Frey (Frey, 1961). He classified the marketing variables into two categories: the offering, and process variables. Booms and Bitner built a model consisting of seven P's (Booms and Bitner, 1981) for the services industries adding Participants, Physical Evidence, and Process. Recently, Lauterborn (Lauterborn, 1990) claimed that each of the 4Ps should also be seen from a consumer's perspective introducing the four C's, customer solution, cost to the customer, convenience, and communication.

Marketing Mix in Practise

Alongside with the academic evolution, inevitably came the changes in marketing strategies and procedures. The marketing mix although adopted in its basics, has to catch up with the economy restructuring.

Product

The objective of the marketer is to optimize the product to meet the requirements of the potential customer. Dell has managed to overcome the time-consuming procedure of updates, researches, testing periods, etc, by providing "ideal products" configured in real time in a one-to-one environment, as the customer can build a computer for her/his specific needs from a set of optional components (www.dell.com). Moreover the consumer is becoming more technologically savvy and increasingly able to acquire quality products in the web - providing that a quality product is the one that meets the customer requirements (EN ISO 9001:2000). Therefore it is expected soon a considerable segment of the market to get over the "brand" and search on-line for the innovative product.

Price

By eliminating significant buying and selling costs, electronic commerce will cause a drop in prices. The end user spends 1/3 of the price to channel activities that is the distributors and the whole reseller network management. The e-commerce reduces these costs by eliminating the sales function and creating more competition for suppliers. Furthermore due to the improved communication between users, channels and manufacturers less inefficiencies occur as manufacturers are occupied only with the desired product, avoiding the safety stock while order status and entailing misunderstandings are directly accessible by the consumer. Consequently the traditional buyer and seller roles are to be restructured. As the Ikea (www.ikea.com) customer agrees to take on the furnishings' assembly and the delivery for a considerable lower price, the e-buyer agrees to search electronically instead of engaging a salesperson and in exchange better prices and possibly better service are offered back to her/him.

The pricing policy following the offer&demand pattern could hardly stay unaffected. Research organizations use the Internet for pricing research. When an on-line purchase is made at a certain price among a number of offerings, data upon the optimal price are collected and the offered price stabilizes at that point that has proven

to increase revenue margin (Miller and Gupta, 2001) Moreover an online bazaar is held in websites like e-bay (www.ebay.com) where customers with semi-perfect knowledge of multiple sources conduct negotiations hitting the best possible price. Dell also acquiring cost information from suppliers combining with other criteria like total past purchases, competition, etc, can monitor and adjust pricing strategies depending on the customer (McWilliams, 2001).

Promotion

Traditional promotional strategy is being replaced online by navigation sensing technologies. Systems send a message offering help if a consumer lost to a site that leads to no-sale is detected either by an automatic response or by a live customer service representative (www.landsend.com); they can offer suggestions and alternatives related to customers' requests providing not only custom delivery of promotional materials but simultaneously enhance the manufacturers' market behaviour. Search engines, affiliate programs (other sites send their visitors to your site) and banner advertisements, are some of the new promotional environment elements.

Place

a) Amazon (www.amazon.com) has revolutionized the book-selling business. b) The banking industry does not only rely to the branches but does online businesses,