"The entire science of marketing has been developed to understand who buys, why they buy, and how they buy. The traditional marketing mix is made up of product, place, promotion, price -- all consistent with a positioning for the product or service. The power of this model was to point out the key tools that firms have to bring their product or service to market successfully.

Each of these concepts becomes much more complex and diffuse in this new world. "Place" is not so obvious, for the place where people shop is now a combination of physical and informational environments.

Promotion is not so clear, because while formal, outbound efforts like advertising and couponing will continue, marketers must also acknowledge the self-organized nature of user-defined ratings of products and services. These are influential and out of control of the marketer. It is now much more about word of mouth -- turbocharged by peer-to-peer communications like the phone and the internet.

Product is still vital, but the service wrappers around product, and the ability to have that product be easy to purchase is more critical than ever.

Lastly, price is much more dynamic than it used to be. Price comparisons are much more transparent than just a few years ago, and getting more so. In many markets, from books to used cars, the influence of the used market is completely changing the pricing dynamics -- with new products competing with used substitutes that can be from 25% to 99% cheaper than their new alternatives.

What's a poor marketer to do? Well, it is time to do a remix of the marketing mix. Just as in any remix, the old notions are still there, and underlie the remix, but the new layer on top is hip, and makes the old song come alive again -- with a new audience, new buzz, and new power."