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The eight Ds: A framework for marketing management

Article · January 2005

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Michael R Hyman
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 Business Outlook
January 2005

The Eight Ds: A Framework for

Marketing Management
Dr. Michael R. Hyman, NMSU

Introduction

In the first edition of his principles of marketing textbook, published

in 1960, E. Jerome McCarthy simplified Neil Borden’s original
twelve-category marketing mix into the 4Ps–product, price, place,
and promotion. During the next four decades, the 4Ps became the
predominant pedagogical framework for marketing management.

Although a few marketers argue that the 4Ps is increasingly

irrelevant to marketing management practice, and a few others
argue that it is conceptually flawed, most marketers continue to use
and defend it. Nonetheless, the scope of the 4Ps framework is
insufficient from both pedagogical and theoretical perspectives.

Were the 4Ps sufficient from a pedagogical perspective, then it

would provide a complete framework for introductory marketing
management textbooks. Yet, even a casual review of recent
textbooks would reveal many additional sections unrelated to the
4Ps, like ethics, consumerism, strategic planning, and the legal
environment; thus, the 4Ps is not an exhaustive framework.
Previous efforts to address this insufficiency include adapting the
4Ps to specific industries (such as direct marketing, banking,
healthcare, and recreation management) and adding new Ps (such
as packaging, participants, partners, people/personnel, perform
(ance), period, physical evidence, physical facilities, plan(ning),
politics, position(ing), (countervailing) power, presentation, preser-
vation, pride, probability, probe/perceive/predict, process(es),
professional, promptness, publics, public relations, and purpose.
Unfortunately, these efforts detracted from the simplicity of the 4Ps
framework while adding little insight.

From a theoretical perspective, previously published criticisms of

the 4Ps include inadequate theoretical grounding, excessive focus
on consumer goods, inability to account for the full range of
marketing management activities, the omission of strategic
marketing, a focus on acquisition rather than use and disposal, and
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incompatibility with relationship marketing. Given such broad and
critical limitations, a new theoretical framework is needed.

A Question-Oriented Framework

Conventional scientific wisdom affirms that asking the right

questions is the most critical step in problem solving, and marketing
scholars concur. Kotler (Journal of Marketing, 1972) ascribed the
same about marketing management when he claimed, “Marketing
management is not a set of answers so much as an orderly set of
questions by which the marketer determines what is best to do in
each situation” (p.52).

A set of guiding questions should be exhaustive so that a complete

set of answers would cover the domain of marketing management
and be mutually exclusive for efficiency and conceptual reasons.
The proposed question set is a way to organize marketing
management pedagogy and scholarship in accord with marketing
management practice. Organizing around a question set rather
than one or more core concepts should promote theoretical and
methodological pluralism.

The eight questions and associated pedagogically friendly Ds–

rather than Ps–are as follows:

(1) Design–How can an/your organization translate consumers’

needs and preferences into a product?

(2) Demand–What makes customers consummate an exchange

with an/your organization?

(3) Didactics–How can an/your organization inform all

stakeholders–but especially targeted customers–about your
products and other activities?

(4) Distribution–How can an/your organization deliver its product to

consumers?

(5) Duty–What are the rights and obligations of all stakeholders to

an/your organization’s activities?

(6) Direction–What is the history of an/your organization and its

products?

(7) Diary–What is an/your organization’s current culture, vision, and

mission statement?

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(8) Dialectic–What market strategy should an/your organization
follow?

The ‘your’ versions of the above questions are for practitioners and
the ‘an’ versions are for pedagogues and scholars.

The first four questions are reminiscent of McCarthy’s traditional

4Ps. Design is more consumer-centric than McCarthy’s product and
reflects the real issue for practitioners: how to create products in
accord with consumers’ needs and preferences. Demand, by
including topics such as consumer psychology and target
markets/positioning, is broader than McCarthy’s price. Didactics is
McCarthy’s promotion unambiguously broadened into the widely
accepted and more theoretical robust integrated marketing
communications. Distribution includes the traditionally covered
subjects of channels, retailing, wholesaling, and logistics.

The fifth D explicitly addresses marketing ethics and social

responsibility. In addition to ethics in all related domains, duty
covers topics like the political and legal environment, consumerism,
and green marketing. Making ethical concerns explicit to marketing
management pedagogy is warranted given current AACSB guide-
lines for curriculum-wide coverage of ethical issues and the growing
belief that ethics instruction in business is important.

The final three Ds explicitly address marketing strategy. By formally

recognizing the importance of history, direction provides a context
for understanding previous marketing actions and results. Diary
recognizes the importance of understanding and setting an
organization’s current culture, vision, and mission statement.
Dialectic, which emphasizes the need for open debate in
establishing a strategic direction, includes topics such as planning
and execution strategies, sustainable competitive advantage, game
theory, SWOT analysis, and marketing audits.

Conclusion

By focusing scholars on questions critical to practitioners, the 8Ds

framework may help both parties overcome the poor
communication that has restricted the dissemination of marketing
knowledge. The 8Ds provides a question set that bounds marketing
management so as to inform but not needlessly restrict pedagogy,
scholarship, and practice. In addition to addressing most criticisms
of the 4Ps, the 8Ds explicitly accounts for ethics, social
responsibility, and marketing strategy.

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 Reference
Kotler, P. (1972), “A Generic Concept of Marketing,” Journal of
Marketing, 36 (2), 46-54.

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