Hospitality

INTRODUCTION TO MARKETING MIX

The term "marketing mix" became popularized after Neil H. Borden published his 1964 article, The Concept of the Marketing Mix. Borden began using the term in his teaching in the late 1940's after James Culliton had described the marketing manager as a "mixer of ingredients". The ingredients in Borden's marketing mix included product planning, pricing, branding, distribution channels, personal selling, advertising, promotions, packaging, display, servicing, physical handling, and fact finding and analysis. E. Jerome McCarthy later grouped these ingredients into the four categories that today are known as the 4 P's of marketing. These four P's are the parameters that the marketing manager can control, subject to the internal and external constraints of the marketing environment. The goal is to make decisions that center the four P's on the customers in the target market in order to create perceived value and generate a positive response.

In popular use "marketing" is the promotion of products or services. Many people use it synonymously with advertising, while advertising is an aspect of marketing they are not one in the same. Marketing is a social process which satisfies consumers' wants or in our case what members or potential members want. Marketing will include advertising, distribution and the selling of a product or service. It will also be concerned with anticipating the members' future needs and wants.

Good marketing is derived from knowledge of what it is the consumers need or want. This can be obtained through market research.