Anyone who has read about marketing must’ve come across the 4 Ps of marketing, namely:
Product
Price
Place
Promotion

Modern marketing talks of even more Ps. Why this love for the letter? Honestly, I don’t know.
The additional Ps to marketing are:
People
Process
Physical Evidence

Mr. Kotler talks of yet two more Ps:
Political situation
Public opinion

I have an addition of my own to make to this growing count of Ps. Hopefully, students of marketing will be cursing me for making this addition.
The P that I want to add to marketing is ‘promise’.
Now my first job was as a call center agent and that fallowed one which involved a long training in sales. The training still continues and I am not sure if I will become a seller.
My experience has taught me that promises are important. The importance depends on the situation at hand. A call center agent would make promises that are intangible just to calm down an angry, irritated or possible worried customer. A seller would do the same about the product he is selling. The promises are mostly intangible. A seasoned agent or seller will tell you what harm a tangible promise can cause.
The whole idea is that when the metrics for measuring the product quality are weak promises become important. The more this weakness the greater is the importance that the promises assume.
If I may take the example of the presidential speech form the movie ‘Independence Day’; it was more of a pep-talk; it was a promise that carried through the sale of the idea that humans would fight the aliens. Now the promise was just that the race would not go down without a fight, there was no guarantee of victory, but the promise worked. Promises often work based upon not the content but who makes them and the way they are made. After all, those are just words, which do not bind anyone to act accordingly. I would believe the word of a man I think is noble, but never of a man whose character I doubt. And I am sure so would everyone else. So if someone wants me to believe the promises they make to me, it is of utmost importance that they do something to establish respect for themselves with me. The easiest approach for them would be to fulfill the promises they make to me. For a first timer, I would go to someone I respect and who has had an encounter with the man in question and act upon his advice. So it will do good to the man in question to fulfill the promise he has made to all the people I respect. He cannot possibly know whom I respect and whom I don’t so he better keep is word always. Ideal situation? I know!