The relationship between Akhism and 4C marketing mix: A view from historical perspective

Abstract

Customer-oriented approaches related to solving the administrative and marketing problems of organizations have gained popularity recently. Customers who have become more selective and conscious affect the strategies of enterprise significantly. Thus enterprise's strategies are transformed into customer-oriented bazar. Customer-oriented transformation one of the customer oriented strategies, 4P marketing mix (product, price, place, promotion) has brought to surface 4C marketing mix (customer value, cost to customer, convenience for buyer, customer communication). The present study aims to demonstrate that 4C marketing mix elements introduced at the end of 20th century was already used by Akhism philosophy during and after the 13th century. To that end each element in 4C marketing mix has been associated with its structuring in Akhism. It has been detected that in Akhism organizations, customer value element were reflected as 'customer is our benefactor' attitude, cost to customer element was reflected as supervisory price, convenience for buyer element was reflected as transport easily to product for customer and customer communication element was reflected as communication with market. Within that context we argue that a deeper analysis on Akhism would be assistive in answering several problems associated with management in modern age.