Chapter 8 Defining Engineering Consultancy Marketing Available to Purchase

For service industry, it was observed that the traditional marketing mix as coined by Professor Neil Borden (twelve elements) and summed up by McCarthy into 4Ps namely product, price, place and promotion were inadequate. Booms and Bitner [10] have suggested an expanded marketing mix model. Magrath [11] endorsed such an approach and categorically pointed out that when marketing services, 4Ps are not enough. He said that another three Ps, namely personnel, physical facilities and process management must be included in the marketing mix. A number of marketing research studies supplement the relevance of each of the 7Ps. Like, Shostack [12] gave due emphasis on physical evidence. Cowell [13] identified the issues in process management. Judd [14] came out with the importance of people. Following the trend, Agrawal [15] expanded the mix of marketing elements to eight variables by including a very important P i.e. pace. Agrawal suggested that the pace of the marketing response is controllable by marketers and therefore is to be included in the marketing response as are the rest of the marketing elements.