
The other day I was talking with a friend and ex-coworker about business. He had some marketing questions and so I told him the best place to start when analyzing a company's marketing plan is with the 4P's: Pricing, Placement (distribution), Promotion, and Product. This is an awesome FRAMEWORK that helps me think about the basics of marketing. Click on the 4Ps link above for a definition and more info.

In continuing our conversation, I recommended the study of a second FRAMEWORK: Porter's 5 Forces . Being that my friend's first name is "Porter", he really took a liking to this one. This model explains that businesses are strongly influenced by 5 "forces" within their industry: their customers, suppliers/vendors, competitors, substitute products, and the possibility of new competitors. This framework should be used by business managers of any company size.

There are a lot of other great models that have been introduced to me in grad school, but unfortunately time limits my ability to share more. I will say that as a future business manager and entrepreneur, the application and understanding of these frameworks highly increase my likelihood of success. And we all know success looks like this:
