Sunflower Intelligence
Marketing & Business Strategy

M02 · Introductory

The 4Ps Marketing Mix

8 lessons

M02 · Introductory · 8 lessons in four modules · about 11 hours

The 4Ps Marketing Mix

Design a product, set its price, choose where it is sold and decide how it is promoted, and make the four decisions fit together.

What you will learn

  • Explain the marketing mix and how each element creates or captures customer value.
  • Make product decisions across the product levels, product line and life cycle.
  • Set prices with cost-based, value-based and competition-based methods, and calculate break-even volume.
  • Use price elasticity to predict how revenue and profit respond to a price change.
  • Choose distribution channels and intensity, and build a price from factory to shelf.
  • Plan an integrated promotion mix, set its budget, and measure it with the right metrics.
  • Combine the four decisions into a consistent plan and defend it with evidence.

Prerequisites

How it works

Each lesson teaches the idea from first principles, works examples step by step, lets you explore it in an interactive, then has you practise with feedback. A lesson is complete when you have worked its guided problems and scored 80% on its knowledge check. Mastery is tracked separately and comes back for review before you are likely to forget. Each module ends with a test; the course ends with a project and a final assessment.

Fictional case

Lantern Coffee Co. A fictional coffee business founded by Ana Lim. It starts as a catering and barista-training service, opens its own cafés and an online shop for beans, and plans a canned cold brew. Every name and figure in it is invented for teaching.

Not sure where to start?

The diagnostic has 11 questions across the course. It doesn’t count toward anything; it suggests the module to start from. Take the diagnostic.

Modules and lessons

Module 1 The mix and the product

  1. The marketing mix and customer valueMarketing turns an idea into an offer that people choose over the alternatives. Learn what customer value is, how product, price, place and promotion each create or capture it, and how to test whether a plan’s four decisions fit each other and the customers they are meant for.75 min · not started
  2. Product decisionsA product is a bundle of benefits, not just a thing. Learn to analyse an offer by its levels and attributes, classify it by how people buy it, describe a company’s product lines, and work out what quality and range decisions cost, using Lantern Cold Brew’s liquid, flavours and can.85 min · not started
  3. The product life cycleProducts, like markets, tend to be born, grow, mature and fade, and each stage asks for a different mix. Learn the stages, the decisions that typically fit each one, how to read a product’s stage from data, and why the life cycle is a planning hypothesis rather than a law.75 min · not started
  4. Module 1 test11 questions on this module. 70% passes.not taken

Module 2 Price

  1. Pricing approachesPrice is the only part of the mix that brings money in. Learn to separate fixed from variable costs, work with contribution, markups and margins, find the break-even volume, and set a price between the floor your costs set and the ceiling your customers’ alternatives set.90 min · not started
  2. Price, demand and pricing tacticsHow much do sales change when the price changes, and does the change pay? Measure price elasticity, predict what happens to revenue and to contribution, choose a launch price strategy, and use psychological, promotional, bundled and segmented prices within their evidence and their legal limits.95 min · not started
  3. Module 2 test10 questions on this module. 70% passes.not taken

Module 3 Place

  1. Distribution channels and decisionsA product sells only where shoppers can find it. Learn what intermediaries do, how channels are structured, how much reach costs in margin and fees, and how to choose channels that fit the product, its price and its positioning.75 min · not started
  2. Module 3 test10 questions on this module. 70% passes.not taken

Module 4 Promotion and the whole mix

  1. The promotion mix and integrated marketing communicationsPromotion is how a business gets its offer noticed, understood and tried. Learn what each promotion tool does well and badly, when to push through the channel or pull through demand, how to make the messages work as one, and how to build a budget from objectives instead of guessing.75 min · not started
  2. Measuring promotion and bringing the mix togetherMarketing numbers are easy to collect and easy to misread. Learn the media and digital metrics, why ROAS is not ROI, how to find out what promotion actually caused, and how to check that product, price, place and promotion work as one plan.80 min · not started
  3. Module 4 test12 questions on this module. 70% passes.not taken

Project and final assessment

  1. Project: Launch plan for Lantern Cold BrewUse the Marketing Mix Simulator to develop a launch plan for a fictional canned cold brew, test it against the alternatives, and defend it in a written recommendation.not taken
  2. Final assessment24 questions across the whole course. 70% passes.not taken

The course is complete when every lesson is complete, every module test is passed, the project is finished and the final assessment is passed.

Resources

  • Marketing Mix Simulator: Choose a product, price, channels and promotion for a fictional launch and see simulated demand, margin and share.
  • Glossary: every term this course defines.
  • Formulas: every formula with its symbols and units.
  • Review: flashcards and the questions you missed, when they are due.

Elsewhere on this site

Sources used in this course

  1. American Marketing Association. “Definitions of Marketing”: the definition of marketing, and the AMA’s note that a panel of five scholars (the 2017 panel) reviews its definitions. ama.org/the-definition-of-marketing-what-is-marketing
  2. Gomez Albrecht, M., Green, M. & Hoffman, L. (2023). Principles of Marketing, sections 1.1 “Marketing and the Marketing Process” and 1.2 “The Marketing Mix and the 4Ps of Marketing”. OpenStax. openstax.org/books/principles-marketing/pages/1-2-the-market…
  3. Borden, N. H. (1964). The concept of the marketing mix. Journal of Advertising Research, 2–7. Reprinted in the journal’s Classics, Volume II, September 1984 (the version consulted).
  4. McCarthy, E. J. (1960). Basic Marketing: A Managerial Approach. Homewood, IL: Richard D. Irwin. The 1960 first edition was not consulted; the publication details and its four Ps were confirmed from library catalogue records of later editions and from Kilian, K. (2020), “Seit 60 Jahren prägen die 4 Ps von McCarthy das Marketing”, transfer, 01/2020, 50–53.
  5. Lauterborn, B. (1990). New marketing litany: four P’s passé; C-words take over. Advertising Age, p. 26. The original was not consulted; the citation and the names of the four Cs were confirmed from Kilian (2020) and other secondary accounts.
  6. Grönroos, C. (1994). From marketing mix to relationship marketing: towards a paradigm shift in marketing. Management Decision, 32(2), 4–20. doi.org/10.1108/00251749410054774
  7. Levitt, T. (1980). Marketing success through differentiation—of anything. Harvard Business Review, January 1980. hbr.org/1980/01/marketing-success-through-differentiation-of…
  8. Garvin, D. A. (1987). Competing on the eight dimensions of quality. Harvard Business Review, November–December 1987. hbr.org/1987/11/competing-on-the-eight-dimensions-of-quality
  9. Copeland, M. T. (1923). Relation of consumers’ buying habits to marketing methods. Harvard Business Review, 1(3), 282–289. The original was not consulted; the citation and its role as the source of the convenience, shopping and specialty classes were confirmed from later reviews of the product-classification literature.
  10. Food Safety Authority of Ireland. “Food Information to Consumers”: the mandatory food information required under Regulation (EU) No 1169/2011. fsai.ie/Business-Advice/Labelling/Food-Information-to-Consum…
  11. Levitt, T. (1965). Exploit the product life cycle. Harvard Business Review, 43(6), 81–94. hbr.org/1965/11/exploit-the-product-life-cycle
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