The four major types of marketing decision

(2006. The Apple Store, 5th Avenue, New York. A strategy of enchantment.)

The revolutions of marketing since 1960

The paradigm of marketing most commonly used today dates from around the late fifties. It was designed to provide a framework for simple analysis of the marketing of large food consumption in supermarkets in the Minneapolis area. This framework of analysis, initially a plan of thesis of a doctoral researcher at the University of Minnesota, included: Product, Price, Place, Promotion, 4 “P” mnemonic significance which will ensure the sustainability of paradigm towards and against all evidences, and inventions of qualitative market research give rise to a second paradigm: the concept of marketing, the primacy of knowledge of market needs.

Since 1960, the environment has changed completely: invention of the supermarket (Wal-Mart in the US, Carrefour in France), containerization that will allow globalization, ibarcode, credit card payment, Internet; digital world, smart phone; social networks; personalized marketing made possible by big data, as well as participation of new entrants: China, South Korea, Singapore, etc.. The Jerome McCarthy mnemonic paradigm is no longer appropriate and in process, having been replaced by the relationship marketing, then by the service marketing to be supplanted by a business model.

Christian Grönroos, Professor of Relationship Marketing at Hanken School of Helsinki goes on to say that the concept of marketing is an epistemological error.

The four major types of marketing decision

Whatever the nature of its business (production or distribution) and the nature of its production (products or services), a company uses the marketing methodology in four different contexts:

• firstly, at the strategic level and the operational level;
• secondly, to manage the demand expressed by the market or to manage new offers to market.

Contexts that generate four types of marketing decision:

1. Operational marketing of demand
2. Strategic marketing of demand
3. Operational marketing of supply
4. Strategic marketing of supply

This gives the following matrix:

The four major types of marketing decisions

• Strategic level
  • Demand marketing (traditional marketing): 2. Strategic marketing
  • Offer marketing (marketing innovation): 4. Strategic management, Strategic relational marketing, Service marketing
• Operational level
  • Demand marketing (traditional marketing): 1. Operational marketing of demand
  • Offer marketing (innovation marketing): 3. Marketing of new brands (products and services)