STRACOMP: The Most Ignored Thinking in Marketing

R.C. Natarajan

Over half a century ago, when Jerome McCarthy gave the much famed 4-Ps of Marketing, academicians and practitioners thought alike thought that they had cracked the code and mastered the field. However, it did not substitute the basic concept of marketing, coined as 3-Cs, the Customer, the Competition and the Company. (Diagram 1)

Then came Jag Sheth’s 4As of Marketing in early 21^st century. Unfortunately, very few understood that Sheth was propagating a complementary model to McCarthy’s and not a substitute. Whereas the 4Ps framework focuses on what the organisation does to get its positioning in consumers’ mind right, the 4As model focuses on how the consumer perceives about the product. (Diagram 2)

It is critical to understand that while Acceptability and Availability are critical factors in positioning mix,  Awareness and Affordability are intermediary factors. (See Diagram 3).

STRACOMP Framework

While the 4Ps and 4As frameworks relate specifically to the segment-product-competition context, STRACOMP framework incorporates the company both from a long-run perspective and from permeation through other departments.

STRACOMP is an acronym for STRAtegy, COMmercial and P&L. A company’s activities can be broadly divided into these three categories. As Peter Drucker said, “Business is marketing”, and if we view the role of a CMO as integrating these three, then the picture emerges somewhat as shown in this diagram. This is quite different from the basic 3C-framework in that the STRACOMP framework focuses on the broad functional dimensions of an organisation. (Diagram 4)

Whereas the elements mentioned under each factor may not be comprehensive, they broadly capture the meaning of each classification. Most of the companies invariably view the role of Marketing as Commercial, much less Strategic and even less Companywide P&L function. (Whitler & Morgan, 2017, July. HBR). This sense of working in silos makes all the three aspects, namely Strategy, Commerce and P&L suboptimal in themselves and the enterprise as a whole becomes less effective. The effective enterprise, on the contrary integrates all the three aspects of business well as shown in the next diagram, leaving no scope for sub-optimality shown therein. (Diagram 5)

When the enterprise alienates P&L focus from Marketing, the natural outcome is low Return on Marketing Expenditure (ROME).

When the enterprise alienates Commercial functions from Marketing (which is most unlikely), the result is a grand plan on paper without any execution.

When the enterprise alienates Strategy from Marketing, it loses crucial battles against competition and thus loses markets.

Thus, we now have four frameworks from which effectiveness of marketing has to be assessed.

1.           The 3Cs Framework
2.           The 4Ps Framework
3.           The 4As Framework, and
4.           The STRACOMP Framework.

Understandably, no single framework can be a panacea. In a given context, one framework or a combination of frameworks may suit the purpose better than the rest. 

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