Читать книгу A Customer-oriented Manager for B2B Services - Valerie Mathieu - Страница 30

While the “4Ps” model remains the reference model of operational marketing, the means of action of marketing have been progressively widened. In order to be in phase with the evolution of the markets, it is obviously necessary today to integrate the notions of experience, customer relationship, digitalization, social responsibility and sustainable development. Among the various extensions of the marketing mix concept and more specifically of the “4P” model, it is interesting to look at two of them: the “4Cs” model and the concept of the services marketing mix.

The “4Cs” model, proposed in the 1990s by Robert Lauternborn, is a sort of transposition of the “4Ps” model from the supplier’s point of view to the customer’s one (Lauternborn 1990). Each of the four elements of the 4Ps is translated into a customer benefit in the 4Cs model: customer needs, convenience of buying, cost to satisfy and communication. The “4Cs” model thus emphasizes the customer orientation of marketing even more explicitly.

The concept of the service marketing mix was developed in the early 1980s by service marketing specialists to better integrate the specificity of service¹⁷. Three other levers of action were added to the traditional “4Ps” model: people, physical evidence and processes. The people element takes into account the actors who play an essential role in the service relationship. These are the staff in contact, the customer and the other customers. The physical evidence reflects the importance of the physical environment in which the service takes place as well as the different tangible elements that are present during the relationship with the customer. The process refers to all the procedures, mechanisms, activities and flows necessary to provide the service. Each of these three service-specific levers is dealt with in the last part of this book.