The Fifth "P" of Marketing

Chris Borgan, a UX blogger I follow, recently posted out the basics of marketing, namely, the "four Ps" that everyone learns in the "Introduction to Marketing" class - product, price, place, and promotion - and that reflecting on them periodically, as basic as it may seem, is a good exercise for identifying fundamental shortcomings.

However, the four-P model is from the perspective of product marketing, particularly in the manufacturing sector where there is little interface with the buyer or consumer of a commercial product. My sense is that UX on the Web is more akin to services marketing and retail marketing, both of which add a fifth "P" to the list: people.

In services and retailing, this is recognized as the most critical element of competitive advantage: any other source can provide a customer with the same items, at the same prices, in the same locations, and reach them with the same messages. The reason people prefer one supplier over another is the buying experience, which is driven primarily by the people with whom them interface.

My sense is that, when it comes to online experience, this has been largely forgotten, mainly because interacting a Web site is a person-less experience in which the customer is interfacing with the inventory and ordering systems of a supplier. It's a very cold, impersonal, and unfulfilling experience - and that's just the problem.

To go a bit further down the same line of logic, it seems to make sense that the Web sites that deliver "good" experience act do so because they act as surrogates for the forgotten fifth "P" - the online channel isn't a surrogate for "place" so much as a surrogate for "person."

I'm in danger of anthropomorphizing the computer interface, granted, but what I'm getting at is that the interaction between user and site is not as closely related to the interaction between consumer and product, or place, or price, or promotion as it is to the interaction between customer and clerk, or cashier, or salesman.

It seems to me an exercise well worth undertaking to consider the customer interaction they have (or would have) with staff in any other channel, and assessing how well their interactions with a Web site stack up.