The Practical Drucker

CHAPTER  |  TWENTY-TWO

Can Marketing and Selling Be Adversarial?

Pick up any marketing textbook, and you'll find “tactical marketing variables” described variously, either using that name or described as “strategic marketing variables,” “the controllable factors,” “the marketing mix,” “the 4 Ps,” and the like. Let's go with the 4 Ps.

The 4 Ps is a term proposed by Professor E. Jerome McCarthy, of Michigan State University, based on his categorization of marketing issues and disseminated worldwide through his book Basic Marketing. As Jerry McCarthy told me more than thirty years ago, prior to his creation of this categorization there were so many different known marketing factors, all completely unorganized, that one didn't know how to proceed. ...