4As OF MARKETING

 

4As OF MARKETING

Acceptability:

The Acceptability component of the 4A model says that a product or service offering must meet or exceed the needs and expectations of customers in a given target market. Acceptability has two dimensions – functional acceptability and psychological acceptability. Functional acceptability refers to the “objective” performance attributes of a product or service.

Psychological acceptability refers to the more “subjective” attributes of a product or service. We often see psychological acceptability associated with so-called “luxury” brands.

 

Example-

The Roomba clearly meets a customer need for clean floors in an innovative, even fun way. The Segway addresses the need for individual transportation, but in a way that is not very compelling.

Affordability:

Affordability refers to whether customers in the target market are economically able and psychologically willing to pay a product’s price. As this definition indicates, affordability also has two dimensions – economic affordability and psychological affordability.

Economic affordability refers to whether the potential customers in the target market have sufficient economic resources to pay a product’s price. Psychological affordability refers to a customer’s willingness to pay, which is primarily determined by a customer’s perception of the value he or she will obtain from a product or service relative to the cost of the product or service.

 

Example-

 At $3995, the Segway is priced beyond the reach of most; it is priced more like a used car than a motorized scooter, which it resembles. On the other hand, the Roomba’s $199 price tag is affordable to most customers and is in line with what they expect to spend for an innovative home appliance.

 

Accessibility:

Accessibility refers to whether customer easily acquire and use the product. It also has two dimensions availability and convenience accessibility. The two dimensions of Accessibility are availability and convenience. Availability refers a selling company should have sufficient product that can meet the actual customer’s demand. Convenience refers to how easy is to the customer to adopt the new product.

Example-

The Roomba is readily available in numerous stores, while the Segway has very few outlets. Moreover, customers are required to undergo several days of training, often in inconvenient locations, before they can start using the Segway.

 

Awareness:

The final component of the 4A model is Awareness, which refers to whether customers are adequately informed about a product’s attributes and benefits in a way that persuades potential buyers to give the product a try and reminds existing users why they should continue to purchase a product. The two dimensions of Awareness are product knowledge and brand awareness. The basic idea here is that most potential customers will not buy unless they have a positive perception of the brand and adequate information regarding the specific product or service.

 

Example-

Both products achieved high levels of brand awareness, primarily through extensive free publicity. However, product knowledge for the Segway is difficult to create without firsthand usage experience.