Concept of Marketing Mix

The Concept of the Marketing Mix'

NEIL H . BORDEN

Harvard Business School

Marketing is still an art, and the marketing manager, as head

chef, must creatively marshal all his marketing activities

to advance the short and long term interests of his firm.

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I HAVaptalways foundterminteresting toon, gain of a

usage, and help to further understanding

concept that has already been expressed in less

appealing and communicative terms. Such has been

true of the phrase "marketing mix," which I began

to use in my teaching and writing some 15 years

ago. In a relatively short time it has come to have

wide usage. This note tells of the evolution of the

marketing mix concept.

NEIL H. BORDEN is professor

emeritus of marketing and advertising at the Harvard Business

School. He began teaching at

Harvard as an assistant professor

in 1922, became an associate professor in 1928, and since 1938 has

been a full professor. He has won

many awards, and received this

year a special Advertising Gold

Medal Award for Education. He

is a past president of the American Marketing Association. He

belongs to Phi Beta Kappa and

the American Economic Association, and he is a public trustee of the Marketing Science

Institute. He has published widely, and one of his books.

The Economic Effects of Advertising, published in 1942, was

based on a study conducted under an ARF research grant.

The phrase was suggested to me hy a paragraph

in a research bulletin on the management of marketing costs, written by my associate. Professor

James Culliton (1948). In this study of manufacturers' marketing costs he described the business

executive as a

"decider," an "artist"—a "mixer of ingredients," who

sometimes follows a recipe prepared by others, sometimes prepares his own recipe as he goes along, sometimes adapts a recipe to the ingredients immediately

available, and sometimes experiments with or invents

ingredients no...