The 4 Cs to Replace the 4 P’s
4C’s marketing model – two models with the same acronym:
- The 4Cs to replace the 4Ps of the marketing mix (Lauterborn, 1990):
- The consumer wants and needs.
- Cost to satisfy.
- Convenience to buy.
- Communication.
- The 4Cs for marketing communications (Jobber and Fahy, 2009):
- Clarity.
- Credibility.
- Consistency.
- Competitiveness.
The 4 C’s marketing model
The 4 Cs Replace the 4 Ps of the Marketing Mix
In 1990 Bob Lauterborn wrote an article in Advertising Age saying how the 4 Ps (he didn’t address the 7 Ps) were dead and that today’s marketers needed to address the real issues.
- He suggested ‘Consumer wants and needs‘ as the focus on being product-led to companies making things customers didn’t want. A good example of this is probably Nokia, which makes lots of products, but fails to satisfy consumer needs and wants.
- His second ‘C’ is ‘Cost to satisfy’ on the basis that price was irrelevant as so many other factors were involved. This is interesting if you consider commodity goods, such as non-brand purchases from supermarkets, where supermarket buyers are forcing down the price they pay to their suppliers. This is likely to be a contributory reason why horsemeat was introduced into ready meals – suppliers having to provide a ‘cost to satisfy’ buyers. The challenge for me is the perception of the terms ‘cost to satisfy’ with a company like Apple.
The ‘cost to satisfy’ sounds more like a lower price offer and Apple products are premium-priced. Perhaps that’s the key, as the cost to satisfy, a brand like Apple has to be higher than the competitors, to contribute to the brand’s DNA as a luxury brand. Interestingly with Apple, taking an iPad Air 2 and looking at the ‘cost to satisfy’ (I mean price here) across several different locations, the price seems to be universally the same.
- The third ‘C’ is ‘Convenience to buy’ and admittedly, the ‘P’ for ‘Place’ always felt tenuous as it’s really about access to the product and the letter ‘P’ worked in the alliterative set!
Convenience to buy is an interesting concept as we live in a 24/7 always-on world. The concept of shopping from 9 am to 5 pm, has gone. Although it’s not that long ago (perhaps 15 years) that I remember working in Italy and the shops closed during lunch hours too. And this included supermarkets – imagine the scene – you arrive at the supermarket at 12.45 pm and at 1 pm you haven’t completed your transaction, so you abandon your shopping trolley, in the store! Today trolley or cart abandonment is more likely to take place in the online world.
Added to this, the development of disintermediation – giving shoppers the chance to remove the middleman and buy direct, as well as reintermediation – the middlemen re-inventing themselves online, as Expedia has done (aggregating holiday offers in one place) or Skyscanner (all your flights for specific dates in one place) or the UK insurance broker ‘Compare the Market’ (bringing many car insurance policies to one screen, making it easier to compare). The advent of wearables takes the concept of buying ‘any place, anytime, anyhow’ to another level.
- The final ‘C’ in Lauterborn’s 4 Cs collection is ‘communication’. Lauterborn viewed promotion as manipulative and described it as a one-way system with communications pushed from company to consumer. His view of communication was that it should be about dialogue, a two-way conversation, between the company and the customer. Applying this in a digital sense, we can see customers creating communications through User Generated Content, so perhaps Lauterborn’s comments were an early insight into the changing nature of customer communication.
The 4 Cs for Marketing Communications: Clarity; Credibility; Consistency, and Competitiveness
The 4 Cs (Clarity, Credibility, Consistency, Competitiveness) are most often used in marketing communications and were created by David Jobber and John Fahy in their book ‘Foundations of Marketing (2009). Once a business has segmented its marketing and identified the target audience, the next stage is to position the business. To successfully achieve this, the 4Cs are a useful tool to create a positioning statement or build an online value proposition.
Looking at each of the 4 Cs in more detail:
The 4 C’s marketing model