The personalised marketplace: beyond the 4Ps

Theories of marketing management and strategy need to evolve and change to keep pace with changes in the marketplace and in marketing practice. As the next century draws closer, it is apparent that some marketing managers are basing their relationships with customers on policies and procedures called either “individualisation”, “mass‐customisation”, or as we prefer, “personalisation”. The core of this practice involves tailoring goods and services to the individual needs and wants of specific consumers, just the opposite of one‐size‐fits‐all. We propose that personalisation is so important to marketing strategy that it should become one of the featured elements of the marketing mix, alongside product, price, promotion, place, personnel, physical assets, and procedures, to form a new marketing mix, the 8Ps.