The 4 Ps of marketing

Origin

The idea has three authors and the wrong one gets the credit.

In 1948 James Culliton, in a Harvard research bulletin on manufacturers’ marketing costs, described the marketing executive as a “mixer of ingredients” [2]. His colleague Neil Borden built a concept round the phrase: if the executive was a mixer of ingredients, “what he designed was a ‘marketing mix’” [1, p. 4]. Borden used the idea in teaching and consulting before he wrote it up in the Journal of Advertising Research in 1964, where his “Elements of the Marketing Mix of Manufacturers” ran to twelve items: product planning, pricing, branding, channels of distribution, personal selling, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, and fact finding and analysis [1, pp. 4 to 5]. He added, in the same breath, “I realize others might build a different list” [1, p. 4].

One of the others was E. Jerome McCarthy, whose Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach (Richard D. Irwin, 1960) cut the mix to four groups of decisions and gave them the alliteration that made them teachable: product, place, promotion, price [3]. “Four P’s” appears on twenty pages of the 1960 edition [3].

The problem McCarthy was solving was pedagogical. Borden’s twelve elements were a case teacher’s checklist; McCarthy needed a structure students could carry into an exam. Four boxes did that. Be precise about what kind of thing the 4 Ps are: not a finding about buyers, not a theory of how marketing works, but a way of sorting the decisions a firm controls. That is what the critics attacked, and it is why the framework cannot be falsified in the ordinary sense.

What the evidence shows

There are two bodies of evidence. One is about adoption. The other is about effect.

Adoption. The framework spread through textbooks. By the 14th edition of Marketing Management (2012), Kotler and Keller were presenting McCarthy’s four groups and proposing an updated set, people, processes, programs and performance, alongside them [22].

Booms and Bitner extended it to seven for services in 1981, adding people, process and physical evidence [4]. Kotler added two in 1986 for markets where a firm must win entry before it can compete: “executives must add two more”, he wrote, “power and public relations” [5]. Rafiq and Ahmed’s 1995 survey of UK and European marketing academics reported “a high degree of dissatisfaction with 4Ps” and “a high degree of acceptance” of the seven-P version [9].

The most useful adoption data is in The CMO Survey. In February 2018, 362 senior US marketers (98.3 per cent VP level or above) were asked which activities marketing leads in their company. Marketing led brand in 91.4 per cent of firms and advertising in 81.7 per cent; pricing in 25.8 per cent and distribution in 10.2 per cent [15, Table 9.1]. Of the four Ps, marketing departments own one.

Brand91.4%

Advertising81.7%

Promotion69.4%

Positioning66.1%

New products33.3%

Sales27.4%

Pricing25.8%

Distribution10.2%

The four activities marketing most often leads are all forms of the fourth P; pricing and distribution, the two elements with the largest measured effects on sales, are led by marketing in a minority of firms.

Source: The CMO Survey, Highlights and Insights Report, February 2018, Deloitte, Duke Fuqua and AMA, n=362, Table 9.1, p. 75. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: % of companies

Show the data

Item	% of companies
Brand	91.4
Advertising	81.7
Promotion	69.4
Positioning	66.1
New products	33.3
Sales	27.4
Pricing	25.8
Distribution	10.2

Effect. The mix as a classification has never been tested empirically, because a classification makes no prediction. The elements have been measured, over and over.

The cleanest single study is Ataman, van Heerde and Mela (2010): a dynamic linear transfer function model on five years of advertising and scanner data for 70 brands in 25 categories in France, estimating the total (short-run plus long-run) sales elasticity of each element. Product 1.37, distribution 0.74, advertising 0.13, discounting 0.04 [11]. Discounting’s long-run effects were one third of its short-run effects; for the other three, long-run effects were more than four times short-run [11].

Product1.37

Distribution0.74

Advertising0.13

Discounting0.04

The two elements marketing departments most often control, advertising and price promotion, are the two with the smallest total effect on sales in this dataset.

Source: Ataman, van Heerde and Mela, The Long-Term Effect of Marketing Strategy on Brand Sales, Journal of Marketing Research 47(5), 2010, n=70 brands in 25 categories, France. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: total sales elasticity

Show the data

Item	total sales elasticity
Product	1.37
Distribution	0.74
Advertising	0.13
Discounting	0.04

The meta-analyses point the same way. Bijmolt, van Heerde and Pieters (2005): 1,851 price elasticities from 81 studies, mean minus 2.62 [12]. Sethuraman, Tellis and Briesch (2011): 751 short-term and 402 long-term advertising elasticities from 56 studies, means 0.12 and 0.24, declining over time [13]. Albers, Mantrala and Sridhar (2010): 506 personal-selling elasticities from 75 articles, mean 0.34 [14]. Different studies, different data, so the comparison is indicative. But the order is stable: price moves sales far more per percentage point than any form of promotion, and promotion is the element marketers most often control [15].

McKinsey’s arithmetic on the income statement of a typical S&P 1500 company puts the same order in profit terms: a price rise of 1 per cent, volume held, lifts operating profit by 8 per cent, nearly 50 per cent more than a 1 per cent cut in variable costs and more than three times a 1 per cent rise in volume [28]. Price is the lever with the most leverage and the one marketing holds least often.

Price (+1%, volume held)8.0%

Variable costs (-1%)5.5%

Volume (+1%)2.5%

Fixed costs (-1%)1.5%

Price is the lever with the most leverage on profit and the one marketing departments hold least often. McKinsey states the price figure and the two ratios; the cost and volume bars are the arithmetic of the same income statement.

Source: McKinsey, The power of pricing, The McKinsey Quarterly 2003 Number 1, Exhibit 1, typical S&P 1500 company (Compustat). Price effect as published; cost and volume effects computed from the exhibit's income statement. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: % change in operating profit

Show the data

Item	% change in operating profit
Price (+1%, volume held)	8.0
Variable costs (-1%)	5.5
Volume (+1%)	2.5
Fixed costs (-1%)	1.5

The challenge

The critique has three strands, and only one of them is empirical.

The framework is producer-centred. Grönroos (1994), in Management Decision, argued that “the simplicity of the marketing mix paradigm, with its Four P model, has become a straitjacket, fostering toolbox thinking rather than an awareness that marketing is a multi-faceted social process” [8]. His evidence was the services and industrial marketing literature, where the buyer takes part in production and the relationship, not the transaction, is the unit of analysis. Lauterborn made the same point for a trade audience in 1990: “It’s time to retire McCarthy’s famous Four P’s,” replacing product, price, place and promotion with consumer wants and needs, cost to satisfy, convenience to buy, and communication [6]. Lauterborn’s is a renaming, not a finding; he offered no data.

The classification is badly built. Van Waterschoot and Van den Bulte (1992), in the Journal of Marketing, tested McCarthy’s four categories against Hunt’s criteria for a classification and found them wanting: not mutually exclusive, not collectively exhaustive, and sales promotion defined negatively, as whatever is left over [7]. A logical test, not an empirical one, but the closest the literature comes to testing the framework itself. Constantinides (2006) reviewed the critique across six marketing fields and found two limitations common to all: “the model’s internal orientation and lack of personalisation” [10].

The mix says nothing about how buyers behave. This is the Ehrenberg-Bass position, a different kind of objection. Sharp’s How Brands Grow (2010) rests, in the institute’s own description, on “scientific laws about buying and brand performance” that hold across categories regardless of what any firm does with its mix [16]. Place becomes physical availability, “the brand being easy to find and buy”: presence, prominence and portfolio [17]. Promotion becomes the building of mental availability through distinctive assets [18]. An institute web page says its researchers “scrutinised the marketing mix, or the 4Ps model” and that such models “now lack the empirical support necessary to address the complexities of modern marketing” [26].

What is contested. Grönroos would replace the mix; van Waterschoot and Van den Bulte would repair it; Rafiq and Ahmed say the seven-P version already has. Ehrenberg-Bass does not argue about the boxes; it argues the boxes are the wrong place to start. None of this has been settled by data, because the disagreement is about what marketing is for.

Where practitioners get it wrong

Running the mix as a promotion plan. The CMO Survey table is the misapplication in one place. If marketing leads advertising in four firms out of five and distribution in one in ten [15], the mix is not being managed as a mix. It is the fourth P with the other three set elsewhere. Every “marketing plan” that is a media plan with a product paragraph at the front is this error. The pattern has not moved. In every edition of the survey from March 2023 to 2026, marketing was primarily responsible for advertising in 83 to 92 per cent of companies, new products in 29 to 33 per cent, pricing in 25 to 31 per cent and distribution in 4 to 8 per cent [23, 24, 29, 30].

Advertising (promotion)New products (product)Pricing (price)Distribution (place)

Eight years and five editions: promotion stays with marketing, product and price sit with marketing in a quarter to a third of firms, place almost never. The 2018 question asked which activities marketing 'leads'; from 2023 it asks what marketing is 'primarily responsible for'.

Source: The CMO Survey, Highlights and Insights Reports, Feb 2018 (n=362, Table 9.1), March 2023 (n=314, p. 42), Spring 2024 (n=292, p. 51), 2025 (n=281, p. 33), 2026 (n=308, p. 42). Deloitte, Duke Fuqua and AMA. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: % of companies

Show the data

Edition	Advertising (promotion)	New products (product)	Pricing (price)	Distribution (place)
Feb 2018	81.7	33.3	25.8	10.2
Mar 2023	92.3	31.1	30.6	6.8
Spring 2024	83.1	31.1	25.1	4.1
2025	85.6	28.8	25.8	7.2
2026	86.9	32.9	28.2	7.5

Spending where the elasticity is lowest. Ataman and colleagues found the two elements with the smallest long-run effects, advertising and discounting, were the two that had dominated the prior literature [11]. Binet and Field’s IPA work makes the same point inside promotion: the optimum split they report between brand building and activation is 60:40, and the pull in most organisations is towards activation [19, 20]. Discounting has long-run effects one third the size of its short-run effects [11]. It looks like it works because the measurement window is short. Gartner’s 2025 CMO Spend Survey shows where the money goes. Paid media is the largest line in the marketing budget at 30.6 per cent, digital channels take 61.1 per cent of total marketing spend, and the three largest digital lines are paid search, display and social advertising [25, 27]. Every one of them is the fourth P.

Paid search13.9%

Digital display advertising12.5%

Social advertising12.2%

Email marketing7.4%

Where the money goes is the fourth P: the largest budget line is paid media, the largest digital lines are paid search, display and social advertising. No line in the marketing budget buys a product change, a price change or a distribution change.

Source: Gartner, 2025 CMO Spend Survey, press releases 12 May and 2 June 2025, n=402 CMOs and marketing leaders, Figure 1. Redrawn by Brave New Media.

Unit: % of total digital marketing spend

Show the data

Item	% of total digital marketing spend
Paid search	13.9
Digital display advertising	12.5
Social advertising	12.2
Email marketing	7.4

Treating the four boxes as four equal boxes. McCarthy’s structure has no weights. Nothing in it says product matters more than price. The evidence does [11, 12, 13], and a plan that spends a page on each P is ignoring it. This is the “toolbox thinking” Grönroos warned about [8]: the boxes get filled because they are there.

Cialdini enters here, and only here. His seven principles, reciprocation, liking, social proof, authority, scarcity, commitment and consistency, and unity, are mechanisms of the fourth P [21, chapters 2 to 8]. They tell you how a promotion persuades, not whether promotion was the right lever. A marketer who has read Influence and not Ataman will pull the wrong one with great skill.

Our own observation. A residential developer with a fifteen-year portfolio briefed us for media: five projects, one new launch, a market that had just turned cautious. The problem was not the fourth P. For the established capital-city project demand existed, and the job was to capture it at a stable cost per enquiry. For the new coastal launch nobody was searching, because the thing had no name yet, so before any media ran we built a forty-eight-term keyword architecture in four intent groups. The launch scaled more than ninefold in a quarter while the established project held its cost per result. The developer brand, the one asset that should have carried all five projects, was the least communicated of the lot.

What to do with it

1. Write down who in your company sets each of the four Ps. If marketing sets fewer than three, call your plan a communications plan, not a marketing mix.
2. Before any promotion budget is approved, list the distribution and product changes considered and rejected, with reasons. Ataman’s elasticities [11] put the burden of proof on the advertiser.
3. Measure every price promotion over at least twelve months and report the long-run effect next to the short-run one. No long-run number, no evaluation.
4. Replace “place” in your plan with the three physical-availability questions: where does buying happen, are we easy to find there, and do we have a buyable product for that occasion [17].
5. Split the promotion line into brand and activation and report the ratio quarterly. Below 60:40 in favour of brand with no stated reason is the finding [19, 20].
6. Delete the word “mix” from any plan that does not show the four elements with a weight next to each. Unweighted, it is a list.
7. When a colleague proposes another P, ask which decision it would change. Booms and Bitner’s three did, for service firms [4]. Most later additions did not.