We all know about the 4P’s Model of marketing mix, Despite its popularity and longevity, the 4P’s model has been criticized for various reasons.
One frequent criticism is that the 4P’s focus on the product or the selling organization rather than on the customer.
To understand what is required to achieve success with customers, marketers need other tools to complement the 4P’s model. One of these important complementary tools is known as the 4A model of marketing.
The 4A model was developed by Jagdish Sheth, a marketing professor at Emory University, and Dr. Rajendra Sisodia, a marketing professor at Bentley University. Professors Sheth and Sisodia acknowledge that their 4A model was inspired by a similar marketing framework that Coca-Cola used successfully for many years.
The diagram below depicts the structure of the 4A model. As this diagram shows, the major components of the 4A framework are Acceptability, Affordability, Accessibility, and Awareness, and each of these elements has two dimensions. The components of the 4A model are a set of conditions that must be fulfilled to achieve success with any given product or service offering. To use a food analogy, the 4P’s describe the raw ingredients available to the chef, and the 4A’s describe the attributes of meals that will delight a given set of diners.
Components of the 4A Model
