Marketing 4a
| Step aside, four PsMarketing needs a new framework that begins and ends with the customer. Marketing tools by themselves do not achieve marketing objectives. There is an intermediate step between the deployment of marketing tools and the achievement of marketing objectives. That crucial intermediate step is represented by the four 'As' of marketing. Based on our research, customers are looking for four things: acceptability, affordability, accessibility and awareness. What we have discovered is that, unless forced by extreme necessity, customers don't want to make trade-offs. The degree of success depends on how close to 100 per cent a company is able to achieve on each of the As.A simple formula is used to evaluate the overall marketing program. We refer to this composite measure as 'market value coverage,' which directly correlates to marketplace success: market value coverage = acceptability x affordability x accessibility x awareness...To succeed, a company has to do well on all four dimensions. The most successful marketing programs achieve close to 100 per cent on each dimension. Mediocre marketing programs tend to achieve high levels (i.e., close to 100 per cent) on two or three of the dimensions, but suffer a bottleneck in one or two.It is important to understand that the four As are not a mere semantic variation on the four Ps, even though each terms appear to correspond closely with one of the Ps. For example, there are many ways to create acceptability, beyond designing a superior product that meets customer needs. Branding is also clearly an important part of acceptability. For example, changing the name of 'prunes' to 'dried plums' raised the product's acceptability. Likewise, factors such as packaging, product ingredients and the image of channel partners all impact acceptability. For example, many manufacturers would love to have their products carried by Nordstrom, just as in the past, companies vied to have their products sold at Sears, whose