The 4 A’s Model of Marketing – The Elements of Marketing Mix

The 4 A’s Model of Marketing – The Elements of Marketing Mix

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Marketing Mix?is a general phrase that can give a brief description of how the organizations should make different kinds of choices to bring the whole process of a product or service to the market. All the elements of the marketing mix influence each other. Great success will come only if a business plan for a company is made and handled right, but if it’s handled wrong then the business can take years to recover. In short, customers are influenced by this combination of factors which is controlled by a company to purchase its products. Along with the tool of 4 P’s we also need one more important complementary tool which is known as 4 A’s of marketing to understand what is required to gain customer’s attention.

Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility, Awareness are the components of the 4 A’s of marketing model that is a set of conditions that must be fulfilled to achieve success with any given product or service offering.?Marketing Mix?is a huge tree that consists of a broader segment as well, like 7 P’s along with the 4A’s and 4 P’s. A lot of understanding of market research, consultation with several people to trade, manufacture, and several other factors are needed for marketing mix. The 4 A’s of marketing is one of the main elements of marketing mix which also consists of several attributes individually amongst themselves.

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The 4A framework of?Marketing Mix?is derived from the customer value perspective which is based on the different set of roles played by the customers in the market- payer, seekers, selectors, and users. The Marketing Mix is the combination of all these elements altogether. If a marketing campaign needs to succeed, it must have all the?4 A’s of marketing?with high marks and must use a blend of marketing and non-marketing resources.?This framework of the 4A’s of marketing helps the companies to create value for customers by identifying what exactly they want and need and also by understanding their new wants and needs.

Components of the 4 A's model

  1. Acceptability–?Acceptability is one of the most important components of the 4A model in a marketing mix and according to this model, in the given target market the product or the service offering should meet or exceed the needs and expectations of the customers. There are two dimensions in acceptability that is functional and psychological acceptability. Functional acceptability is referred to as “objective” wherein it considers performance attributes of the product and services. Certain questions always come into mind that are- Whether the customer expectation is like what the product features? Is it reliable? Whether the performance is as expected? Whereas on the other hand Psychological acceptability is referred to as “subjective” where the attributes of products and services are considered. We can see that there are more chances wherein psychological acceptability is associated with luxury brands. We can consider the example of an automobile; a mid-priced automobile can be considered as an objective functional as a vehicle of the comparable size made by Mercedes or BMW, but these kinds of brands are more psychologically accepted to a certain segment of the buyers. The customer must think that they can always buy a certain product or service by paying an extra amount of money on that. They should analyse that the certain product or service is designed according to their needs which will surely help to get better solutions to the customer. They should also have that thought as in the product gives some value to them and ultimately it should serve the purpose of the product being purchased. Comfort is the main key and so the customer must feel the comfort with the product and hence there should not be any hesitation to buy it.
  2. Affordability–?Every product comes with a price, and so affordability is referred to as whether the customers in the target market are economically able and psychologically willing to pay the price of the products. As it is already known, affordability also consists of two dimensions that are economic affordability and psychological affordability. Economic affordability refers basically is referred to whether the potential customers in the target market will have sufficient economic resources to pay the price of the products. Now, Psychological affordability refers to the willingness of the customers to pay for the product which is primarily determined by the perception of the value of a customer that can be obtained from the product or service which is related to the cost of the product or services. Here affordability does not mean that cheaper products must be marketed, its primary understanding is to reach the customer and to satisfy their needs and therefore the designing of each and every product must be made in order to match the needs of the customers. The customer must not have this thought as in if they cannot buy the product or service that means it should be in their buying capacity. Each and every stratum of society earns a different range of income, the income earned by the set of people in rural market is through different ways, so by keeping this in mind most of the companies should design their product or service so that it can reach to a larger audience.
  3. Accessibility–?Accessibility is the third component of the 4 A model which can be referred to as the products or services which are easily accessible to the customers. Customer Availability and Customer Convenience are the two dimensions of accessibility. How feasible it can be for the potential customers to acquire the product or service is measured by the convenience whereas whether the selling company has enough of the product that can match up to the customer demand is measured by the availability. If we take an example for rural markets, then their greatest problem is to reach the customer or retailer. The product availability is determined by its logistics there. There will not be any problem once it reaches the shelves of the retailers then. Lesser number of brands available in the market can be the reason behind and the influence or the relationship with the retailer makes no difference. The main task of the managers of the companies to reach the customers on time is as it can be seen that most of the times the promotion of the product or service has been done well but by the time it reaches the customer, it gets late. So reaching the market should be considered.
  4. Awareness–?The final component of the 4 A model of marketing in the marketing mix is awareness which is referred to the persuasion of potential buyers to give the product a try as to whether the product’s attributes and benefits are adequately informed to the customers that can in a way help to and reminds the existing users why they should continue to purchase the product. Product Knowledge and Brand Awareness are the two dimensions of awareness. Positive perception of the brand and adequate information about the product or service are important as the basic idea here is a perception that is the most potential customers will not buy unless they have. Awareness programs must be conducted and it should be in such a manner that they should reach the customer mindset. Commercials on media like TV, social media, radio, and outdoor are the main way of reaching the customer. If we take an example of rural market, a place or area where the village head meets or in the other way the meeting place in the villages must conduct the awareness program. The awareness program must be full-fledged where it can spread the important message to the audience and there should be some concern for them and their place. The promotional activities must take place in their local language so that the audience can relate to it in a much better way. Apart from this, certain more things that the company must take care of are- the color of the product, logo, packaging, slogan, so on. The product or service should be represented in such a way that by looking at its glimpse itself the customers should think that they can go for it and they must be in such a position wherein they will be able to differentiate between the original and fake products.

The companies don’t always use all the P’s or A’s of Marketing Mix but most of the time will use the mixture of some. The globalization of the business and the growing recognition of the importance of customer retention, interaction and the networking in the industrial, marketing experiences, business ecosystem, value migration, lifecycle, customer retentions, and relationship marketing among other tends and criteria, begin to create new trends in thinking about the theory and practice of marketing mix. Restructuring the marketing strategies to suit the needs and requirements of the consumers is necessary. The 4 A model relies on the idea of enabling the energy of the consumers to involve with the range of stakeholders with the set of different products or services. The 4 A’s of the framework must be taken into account to make design and development of the solution for the companies. Other factors must also be considered along while dealing with the solutions to be more effective that are tariff system, comprehensive approach, effective deployment and scale-up, kind of activities, and consumer perspective.

The 4 A wins on every dimension that matters as it is active rather than passive dynamic rather than static, and requires decision-makers to look at marketing activities and investments from the outside in, it is more prevalent as it engages the entire organization in key marketing decisions and by putting the customer value proposition at the centre of the strategy dialogue it emerges well beyond the market values. A much superior road map to delivering great offerings and marketing programs is provided by the 4 A’s of this model in the marketing mix and framework that will help screen out both strategic and tactical disasters. This combines the useful action plans with razor-sharp analyses and in the process teaches us how to think better about market opportunities and how to apply the 4 A’s framework to advantage. How to be a better analyst, manager, innovation implementer, and to sustain is the focus of this learning. A long overdue is represented to the 4 A’s of marketing as it is a truly novel framework for thinking about marketing decision making. The 4 P’s has always endured the circumstances but the 4 A’s have brought meaning into this situation despite decades of trials that companies adopt a more customer-centric stance. We must think about benefits rather than features: Price becomes Affordability, Product becomes Acceptability, Place becomes Accessibility, Promotion becomes Awareness. These marketers anticipate the impact of their decisions on the consumers and this shift in perspective is somehow deceptively simple but profound in its implications. Any manager or organization that provides the 4 A’s of marketing mix offers a game-changing perspective for striving to become market-driven and customer-centric as these 4 A’s of marketing in return identifies four roles of customers to which marketers must respond if they are to be successful.

DRIKA TALJAARD

Credit Analyst at Absa Group

10 个月

Very good content and explanation on the 4 A’s of marketing ??

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