Modern marketing is more than just telling people about your brand. It involves theories and calculations that economists and business strategists have researched over a long period. One of the key principles in modern marketing is the concept of 4 C’s by Bob Lauterborn. This new take was a response to the old idea of the 4 P’s of marketing.

I will try to explain the idea behind the 4 C’s of marketing and we will discuss how the theory has evolved in 35 years since it was introduced in 1990.

What Are the 4 C’s of Marketing?

Developed by Bob Lauterborn in 1990, The 4 C’s of marketing—Consumer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication- is a marketing model that replaced the old model of the 4 P’s (Product, Price, Place, Promotion).

This new model was consumer-centric and focused more on meeting the needs of buyers or customers rather than on the idea of selling more products.

Right after it was introduced, The 4 C’s model was accepted in the world of brand marketing and promotions. Companies understood that they could benefit more by studying the consumer market than by studying the product market.

The 4 C’s framework prefers building relationships and creating value, making it highly suitable in the dynamic marketing world of the 21st century.

Let’s continue!

Learn About 4 C’s of Marketing in Detail

As I told you, the 4 C’s of marketing—Consumer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication. But how do they fit in the model proposed by Bob Lauterborn? Let’s discuss this one by one.

Consumer (Wants and Needs)

The first C in the model stands for Consumer and it focuses on the desires of your customer. As per the 4 C’s model, identifying and fulfilling the needs of customers should be the approach that a businessman should follow.

Instead of focusing on the product as the old models of marketing proposed, this method wants businesses to first conduct customer research and then provide their product or service based on customer insights.

How to implement this?

We can implement this idea in our business marketing by organizing customer research campaigns. We have to conduct surveys, interview our focus groups, and perform market research to understand our target audience.

Once we have enough data from our customer research, we can use data analytics to track our consumer section’s behavior and their choice or preferences.

Real-world examples

You must have observed how e-commerce platforms recommend products based on your personal choices and preferences. Amazon, for example, shows you recommendations like “Customers who bought that also bought this”. It identifies the behaviors of consumers like you and tailors a recommendation personalized for you based on customer data analytics and research.

Social Media platforms also serve you ads based on your browsing patterns. Search engines tailor results based on your search patterns too. Google often shows results highlighted by the “You visit often” label for websites that you visit regularly.

Ad platforms regularly use customer behavior to show you targeted ads.

Now, you probably understand enough about how consumers or customers fit into the 4 C’s model of marketing.

Let us move on to the second element of this model.

Cost to Satisfy

The second C in this marketing model talks about the overall cost a customer pays, both financial and emotional, to avail of a service or buy a product.

This element doesn’t only focus on the price the customer pays. It also includes the overall cost.

This includes additional monetary costs, like fuel spent to travel for the purchase or to research the item. It also includes non-monetary costs, such as the time spent by the consumer and the effort.

There’s also the cost of conscience, like compromising a moral principle to buy a product.

Finally, opportunity cost comes into play, which involves sacrificing a benefit they could otherwise receive.

How to implement this?

To implement this into your business and marketing campaigns, you need to first honestly evaluate the customer’s overall cost to buy your product.

With that data in mind, observe where you can provide customers with some additional cost savings. You can also provide facilities like reducing delivery fees by bundling products or by directly providing free shipping.

You can create more local points of contact to reduce customer’s overall cost of effort and time. Providing good customer service also helps in reducing the total cost a customer bears to avail of your service.

Real-world Examples

Various offline grocery-selling giants use the cost-cutting strategy to provide customers with cheaper deals. D-Mart, Walmart, and Dollar Tree: They all provide customers with low-priced goods by reducing their logistic and management costs themselves.

Costco provides wholesale rates when people buy large quantities of goods from them. That helps customers by reducing their financial burden. They get high-quality goods at lower prices by visiting these stores.

Even online e-commerce platforms like Amazon, Flipkart, and others provide special discounts on holidays like Black Friday Sales or Big Billion Days along with free delivery options, reducing overall the cost customers have to bear.

Many price-comparison websites help customers to find better prices without having to manually research each store. This helps customers not only save money but also saves their time and effort.

Convenience to Buy

The third C in the 4 C’s marketing model is Convenience. This focuses on how easy it is for customers to access your product or service. Instead of talking about “where can we sell our product?”, this model talks about “how can we make it more accessible to our customers?”

In this age of online shopping, convenience is often the deciding factor for consumers. Customers want to get their products or services with almost no effort—whether it’s through online platforms, local stores, or even home delivery.

Since many platforms do provide them with this facility, businesses are forced to provide customers with convenience and an easier shopping experience.

How to Implement This?

To use the model of customer convenience in your business, start by understanding your customer’s journey. Identify pain points that make the buying process tedious or inconvenient.

• Provide online shopping options, allowing them to purchase at any time.
• Optimize your website for mobile devices to ensure seamless browsing. Responsiveness is also a part of core web vitals.
• Reduce delivery times or offer same-day delivery for high-demand products.
• Ensure multiple payment options, including digital wallets, credit cards, and cash on delivery. Many customers prefer buying products on EMI, so providing no-cost EMI also adds convenience.

Real-World Examples

E-commerce giants like Amazon dominate this space with services like Amazon Prime, offering same-day or one-day delivery. Grocery delivery apps such as Instacart and BigBasket provide the ultimate convenience by delivering fresh produce to your doorstep.

In the retail sector, companies like Starbucks allow mobile ordering, where customers can order ahead and pick up their coffee without waiting in line. This reduces both time and effort for consumers.

Almost every offline store that sells food items now delivers using Swiggy, Zomato, Uber Eats, Grab, Doordash, Grubhub, etc.

Even traditional banks are adapting by offering online banking and mobile apps to reduce the need for physical branch visits. Convenience is key to customer retention.

Communication

The fourth and final C in the 4 C’s model is Communication. This element highlights the importance of two-way interaction with your customers. Unlike the traditional “Promotion” under the 4 P’s, Communication focuses on listening to and engaging with your audience to build trust and long-term relationships.

When you are providing good customer service, multiple methods for customers to approach you with their issues, and quicker responses, you are building customer loyalty by using Communication as an element of your business.

How to Implement This?

• Use social media platforms for real-time engagement. Respond to comments, messages, and reviews promptly.
• Encourage customer feedback and use it to improve your offerings.
• Personalize communication through email marketing, addressing customer needs directly.
• Leverage storytelling to convey your brand values and connect emotionally with your audience.

Real-World Examples

Nike excels in communication by using storytelling to inspire and connect with customers through its “Just Do It” campaigns. On social media, they frequently interact with their audience, creating a sense of community.

Zappos, an online retailer, is known for its exceptional customer service and communication. They go beyond solving queries, often building emotional connections with their customers.

Even small businesses now utilize platforms like WhatsApp Business to interact directly with customers, making communication quick and convenient.

Now that we have understood the elements of 4 C’s, let us discuss why this was so happily adopted by everybody. It must have been effective, right? So what is it that makes the idea of 4 C’s so effective?

Benefits of Using the 4 C’s Model

The 4 C’s model has many advantages. Since it focuses on customers, most of the benefits are customer-centric. The model doesn’t only improve a brand’s relationship with the consumer but also helps a business with

The 4 C’s model offers numerous advantages:

It improves the customer satisfaction.

Since 4 C’s model talks more about the customer than the product, it surely improves customer satisfaction. When a business implements the 4 C’s, it can make the product or service better aligned with what the market demands or what the customer wants.

It always caters first to the consumer’s needs. That helps customers trust the brand more.

It promotes communication and helps retain customers.

This is yet another benefit that businesses can get by adopting the 4 C’s model. By fulfilling the need for clear communication with customers and building two-way communication, brands can improve their customer loyalty and encourage repeat business.

Customers always want to shop where they’re heard and their needs are understood. A good customer care service increases customer retention by a large margin.

It helps create a more powerful brand image.

Brand image is important. A good brand image helps you stimulate a brand’s growth and recognition. When you use the 4 C’s model for your brand’s marketing, you send a message to your consumers that you care about them and not about yourself. You enhance your brand’s reputation.

By adopting the convenience part of the 4 C’s model, you put your customer before yourself. This attracts loyalty and enhances your brand’s reputation.

It gives you a competitive edge.

Two important elements of the 4-C model are ‘Cost to satisfy’ and ‘Convenience’. By implementing these two, you get an edge in this regularly changing market. When you have an advantage in terms of cost and convenience, you have a competitive edge.

It helps your business to grow at a much faster pace than your competitors.

How to Use the 4 C’s in Your Marketing Plan?

Having clarified the concept of the 4-C model, I will not tell you how we can effectively apply this to our marketing plans.

Businesses can incorporate the 4 C’s into their marketing strategies by focusing on practical steps such as learning about buyers, ensuring communication, and emphasizing customer success.

The very first step to apply the 4 C’s into your business marketing plan would to be know your customer.

• Make detailed customer profiles.
• Identify your target audience.
• Use analytical tools like Google Analytics to understand your customer’s behavior.
• Collect social media data and use CRM systems to analyze this information.

Once you have understood your customer, you have to now understand the market in which your business has to perform.

• See the trending pattern in the market.
• See what your competitors are doing.
• Create and highlight a USP for your product or service.

After that, you have to create a bridge between your business and your customer. This is the main goal of any marketing campaign.

• Build a connection between you and the customer.
• Create campaigns that are personal and speak to your target audience.
• Focus on increasing two-way communication and answering your customer’s questions.
• Provide your audience with an option to give you feedback.
• Have good customer service to show that you care about customer satisfaction.

When you have good communication with your customers, your chances of retaining them become very high. Then, your next step should be to confirm your customer’s success. It means that you should monitor whether your customers found the value they were looking for or not.

• Create a customer success team that monitors user experience.
• Take post-purchase feedback and provide space for them to review their experience.
• Act on customer’s issues once they have purchased your product. Follow up.
• Offer support even after they have availed your service.

These practical methods can help you properly incorporate the 4 C’s into your business and marketing strategy. Once you have implemented these, you will see how your business seems more customer-oriented and trustworthy than before.

The Shift From the 4 P’s to the 4 C’s

As the market became more customer-centric, the transition from the 4 P’s to the 4 C’s became more visible. It shows that businesses did benefit from this approach and model.

While the 4 P’s focus on the product or service that a business offers, the new 4 C’s model focuses on how the customer experiences and connects with the business.

In this competitive and digitally-driven marketplace where the same products are offered by multiple brands, focusing on the 4 C’s model and enhancing customer experience is what makes a brand better than the other.

Now, businesses prefer a consumer-centric approach. The 4 P’s marketing matrix is still effective but a bigger focus on 4 C’s marketing model is clearly evident.

Business-oriented model doesn’t even work effectively in this digital media-driven marketplace.

By adopting the 4 C’s—Consumer, Cost, Convenience, and Communication—businesses can build stronger relationships, deliver superior value, and outpace competitors through enhanced relationship building and improved value provision.