Teach the 4 Ps is back!

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You may have noticed that Teach the 4 Ps took a bit of a break. For much of the last year, other activities – including revising Essentials of Marketing (watch for the 16th edition this spring) – have taken me away from day-to-day maintenance of Teach the 4 Ps. While we kept up semi-annual extensive updates of Learn the 4 Ps, this site has languished a bit. We apologize, but we also have a plan to get things going again.

To make sure this happens, we have recruited some help. I want to introduce the newest member of the T4Ps team, Jon Firooz. Jon has taught a range of marketing courses at Colorado State University. Jon’s background includes senior level R&D and marketing positions with Hewlett Packard and In-Situ. Jon knows Essentials of Marketing because he uses the text when he teaches the introductory marketing class; Jon also helped develop ancillary materials for the book including the end-of-chapter and Connect Interactive activities “Marketing Analytics: Data to Knowledge.” Our students enjoy Jon’s teaching and I am sure you will appreciate what he brings to these pages.

Brick-and-Mortar Retailers Turn to Scrambled Merchandising

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The concept of scrambled merchandising (“carrying any product lines they think they can sell profitably) has existed in practice and in Essentials of Marketingas for many editions – since before my time as co-author (and that is more than a dozen years). Yet the practice seems to be gaining popularity in the face of growing online competition as brick-and-mortar stores seek new ways to enhance profitability. In this USA Today article and video, “Retail mashups bring experiences such as getting a tattoo and shopping together,” (September 11, 2017) we learn of some interesting examples of the practice.

Sharing some of these examples in class could be fun. You could show your students the video just to get it started. To extend their learning, ask your students about the potential benefits each party might receive for such a pairing. Use one of the specific examples in the article to make it more concrete. So, for example, each party might be exposed to new target markets. For the tattoo artist, the cost of operating in the back of an existing store might be lower than opening his own shop – and Shinola can generate additional rental revenue. These short  questions break up a lecture and encourage students’ critical thinking around retailing—a topic they already know something about.

Which Brands are Getting It Right? (An Insider’s Perspective)

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Most of us try to keep up on the marketplace. But it is a challenge to keep up with which brands are crushing it – and which are perhaps overrated. It helps to know what insiders think. This article, “It’s A F*cking Burger”: Execs Dish About Their Favorite And Least Favorite Companies,” (Fast Company, August 14, 2017) provides that insight. Four executives anonymously offer opinions and answer some interesting questions. I found it helpful to read which companies they think get branding right, which are overrated, and the major challenges facing marketers today. The article suggests some new examples you might be able to salt into class a lecture or class discussion—particularly when covering marketing strategy planning, branding, and promotion.

“We wanted [our restaurant] to be Instagrammable”

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Most industries report a decline in the effectiveness of advertising as a means to tell customers about their product. As we note in chapter 16, customers tend to place more faith in what real people say about goods and services they might buy. Apps, including the online review site Yelp and social media site Instagram, offer customers an easy and fast way to hear about other customers’ experiences.

Restaurants have long benefited from word-of-mouth (telling a friend about that “great meal you had at the new bistro”). Today, some restaurants are looking for ways to be more “Instagrammable.” Read more at this trend in “Instagram is pushing restaurants to be kitschy, colorful, and irresistible to photographers,” The Verge, July 20, 2017.

This article could be discussed at many different points in the semester. It offers an interesting example of customer value (chapters 1, 8 and 17); for some target customers, improving the “shareability” of an experience enhances the experience. For many young people, sharing the experience is part of the experience. It also suggests how consumer behavior (chapter 5) with social media (chapter 16) can impact new product development (chapter 9). After sharing this example in class, students could be asked: why are these businesses doing this? They are likely to immediately get that it fosters word-of-mouth, but may not readily connect with other benefits.