textbooks suggest a general consensus to classify marketing mix elements in the same categories, the lack of any formal and precise specification of the properties or characteristics according to which marketing mix elements should be classified is a major flaw". Van Waterschoot and Van den Bulte[61] recognize three flaws in the Four P model: "The properties or characteristics that are the basis for classification have not been identified. The categories are not mutually exclusive. There is a catch-all subcategory that is continually growing" Many marketing-related phenomena are not included. Moreover, as Johan Arndt has concluded, marketing research remains narrow in scope and even myopic, and methodological issues become more important than substance matters. "Research in marketing gives the impression of being based on a conceptually sterile and unimaginative positivism...The consequence...is that most of the resources are directed toward less significant issues, overexplaining what we already know, and toward supporting and legitimizing the status quo". Unfortunately, far too little has changed in mainstream marketing research since this was written over a decade ago. The usefulness of the Four Ps as a general marketing theory for practical purposes is, to say the least, highly questionable. Originally, although they were largely based on empirical induction and earlier lists of marketing functions of the functional school of marketing , they were probably developed under the influence of microeconomic theory and especially the theory of monopolistic competition of the 1930s , in order to add more realism to that theory. However, very soon the connection to microeconomic theory was cut off and subsequently totally forgotten. Theoretically, the marketing mix became just a list of Ps with roots. . Reference ...
