Components of the 4 P's

   The 4 P's section contains the following:

  1. Analyze the company's best selling, or one of its new products, in terms of the PRODUCT, PRICE, PLACE, PROMOTION framework.

    You may have to be creative! More and more companies sell services, not products, so you might have to stretch the concept a bit for those companies. 
     

      Where do I look?

 Videos

Getting help with the assignment

  Getting Help

  1. First and foremost, please watch the videos available in this guide. They will show you how to use the resources, and therefore find the information you need.
  2. If you need clarifications on the assignment, such as ratios or what each section means, please ask your TAs
  3. For questions about resources and research, Please visit the NEED HELP? page on this guide.

Tips and tricks

   How do I...

...locate the price of a product?

  • This is actually often much more difficult than you would expect.  The reason is that prices can vary significantly from one location to the next.  Aggregate prices can be found for some product types, but often times you may have to offer a range of prices, or simply suggest how the prices differ relative to competitor prices.

   Other FAQs

My company offers services instead of products.  What should I do?
  • You can absolutely examine a service from a 4 Ps framework.  A good example is airlines.  Are there specific services can you focus on for an airline (First class)?  If this proves difficult, you can look more broadly at company 4P related policies (for example, how does Southwest's prices/product/etc. compare to its' major competitors) to make your analysis.
My company is a retailer.  How do I pick which product to list?
  • This can be tough.  You can try to analyze a specific service (for example, the "Geek Squad" for Best Buy).  You could look at a broader product type rather than a specific product or brand (for example, for Home Depot you could look at "appliances", or get even more specific and choose an appliance type, like "refrigerators"). What's tricky about this is that you want to focus on products/services by Home Depot themselves, and not one of the brands produced by other companies that they happen to sell.  In a worst-case scenario, talk to your TAs about the possibility of analyzing the 4P's more broadly for the company compared to it's competitors.  In general, we encourage you to be as specific as you can when selecting a product/service.
How do I know what the best selling product is?
  • This can also be difficult in some situations.  Often, sales data for specific product lines or even brand lines will not be available.  When this happens, try to determine what the company's primary industry is and pick the most notable product in that industry.  In some cases you will have to make a judgment call.  if you do, just be sure you aren't overlooking a major product/industry.