I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the difference between traditional marketing and Marketing 2.0, and this post will talk about how the latter interprets the “marketing-mix” as articulated in the SIVA model (proposed by Chekitan Dev and Don Schultz in the Marketing Management Journal of The American Marketing Association).

What Is The “Marketing Mix”?

The term has origins going back to 1948 when James Culliton said that a marketing decision should be a result of something similar to a recipe. Neil Borden interpreted this concept in 1953 in his American Marketing Association presidential address by referring to the recipe as a ‘Marketing-Mix’. Later, E. Jerome McCarthy, proposed the famous 4 P’s classification in 1960.

What Are The 4 P’s?

I’ve talked about the 4 P’s in an earlier post here, they are:

  1. PRODUCT: This refers to what’s being sold, whether it’s a product of service. Traditional marketing served as one of the key drivers of product development through market research.
  2. PRICE: As the name suggests, this is about setting the selling the price of the product. Again, this was traditionally driven by market research and economic theory.
  3. PLACEMENT: This refers to where the product is sold and how it is distributed to target markets.
  4. PROMOTION: This represents all of the communications that a marketer may use in the marketplace. This traditionally focused on advertising and public relations.

This model has been modified by various people over the years to include additional P’s, such as “people”, in an attempt to make it for customer focused. These efforts have largely failed though because the articulation of each element reflects the top-down approach of traditional marketing. Of course, marketers have always conducted market research to understand the market, but the idea that customers build brands as much as companies is not consistent with this approach.

How Is The SIVA Model Different?

The SIVA model attempts to rearticulate the 4 P’s in a way that is more consistent with the idea that in today’s market environment brand building power has shifted from companies to communities. This is an idea at the core of the Marketing 2.0 philosophy.

  1. PRODUCT becomes SOLUTION: The idea here is that what’s being sold is driven by consumer need. The community now defines that product instead of marketing. Marketing’s role is to understand and articulate user need to the company.
  2. PRICE becomes VALUE: Here pricing is driven by the value a product offers users rather than by economic theories. With new economic models there are more and more opportunities for customers to actually set pricing through services like Google AdWords.
  3. PLACEMENT becomes ACCESS: Again, rather than defining where the product will be sold, it’s about providing access to users when and where they want it.
  4. PROMOTION becomes INFORMATION:Rather than placing advertisements out in the world, this approach is simply about providing users with information about the product so they can determine if it offers value as a solution and is readily accessible.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your feedback.

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4 Comments to “The SIVA Model for Customer Focused Marketing”

  1. […] product, promotion) of traditional marketing. I’ve written about this in more detail in an earlier post here. Today, I’ll be writing about the social media mix, which takes the balancing concept and […]

  2. […] might help to think about articulating the state of the 4 P’s (product, placement, price, promotion) as you write this […]

  3. Chris West says:

    This is a very useful update of the 4P’s, which I have always thought a bit clunky. Changing ‘product’ to ‘solution’ is particuarly helpful – entrepreneurs need to ask themselves ‘Where’s the pain?’ when considering products. And value is the magic consideration: price follows.

    Thanks for posting it.

    Chris West, author, Marketing on a Beermat.

  4. sengaloun says:

    Thank you for sending and share the Marketing MIX and used 4Ps .I like it to learning very much .I hope you will share other marketing system for me thanks again

    Sengaloun

    Sincerely .

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