The Four Ps of the Marketing Concept: Prescriptive, Polemical, Permanent and Problematical

A day rarely passes without there being discussion of the majorchanges which organizations in both the public and private sectors, areundergoing to become more effective. The case for change is often saidto be driven by the imperatives of an increasingly demandingmarketplace; and this case is often expressed in a seductive rhetoricwhich utilizes maxims and metaphors drawn from the ideological resourceof the marketing concept. The authors believe that the current penchantfor couching change initiatives in the language of marketing exposessome of the limitations of the marketing concept. Discusses theselimitations and addresses the problems which constrain the use of themarketing concept as an ideological resource.