The four P's in social simulation, a perspective on how marketing could benefit from the use of social simulation

Marketers employ the four P's — product, price, placement and promotion — in trying to optimize the performance of their products on a market. Both researchers and practitioners in the field of marketing will benefit from increasing their understanding of how the four P's relate to market dynamics and how marketers should employ them in managing dynamic markets. This paper intends to provide a formalization of the four P's for the development of a social simulation model meant for consumer markets. The paper concludes with suggestions for the construction of an experimental design based on such a formalization, and the use of different types of empirical data. © 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.