The famous 4 P’s of the marketing mix (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) are rapidly being superceded by the 4 R’s of the relationship mix (Recommendation, Resilience, Relation, Reputation). There are many factors driving this, but the principle ones are social media, relationship networking, and the ease with which products can be duplicated.

Recommendation vs Product: Product features are rapidly becoming secondary to the recommendations supporting them. There’s an intrinsic lack of trust in the market and an absent product endorsement is suspicious, regardless of the product feature set. Contrived recommendations are even more suspect.

Resilience vs Price: Confronted with the other 3 R’s and the facility of product duplication, price elasticity will become a more important variable than price alone.

Relation vs Place: Optimal location/distribution of products and services will matter less over time than the context within which it is delivered – cross-selling, collaborative filtering, just-in-time provision.

Reputation vs Promotion: Reputation of the seller is becoming more important than promotion. All the promotion in the world will not be able to make up for a poor reputation.

While the 4 P’s are easy to control, the 4 R’s are beyond a seller’s direct control to a large degree. Optimal self-organization of the 4 R’s depends more on authenticity and involvement of the customer in product design and delivery.