Introductory Blog on the Four P's and Class Project

This initial entry will focus on the use of the four P's of marketing -- product, placement, positioning and price -- as it relates to our Wharton Marketing class project to study Walmart's marketing efforts.

Kotler and Armstrong encourage the reader to look away from outmoded definitions of marketing (i.e., "telling and selling), and move into marketing as a "social and managerial process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others. (p. 5). One need only look at a written or visual media commercial of the 1960's or 1970's to see how marketing has evolved since that time, with the Internet taking on a more valued role of identifying buyers and delivering what the consumer wants. However, the Four P's remain as relevant today as they were decades ago -- only media have changed in how the Four P's are actually delivered.