The study of the concepts of relationship marketing, CRM, co-creation, salesforce automation and digital marketing has led the authors to believe that, in addition to the essentially twentieth century, company-centric paradigm of the marketing mix, marketing managers would do well to adopt a twenty-firstcentury, customer-centric paradigm, and refer to it before planning the marketing mix.

As pre-requisites of the marketing mix, marketers should identify and understand the customer mix, defined as follows: The customer mix is the set of personal elements that determine the source of demand, purchasing preferences, consumption patterns and the relationships between the consumers of goods, services and experiences and their suppliers.

The ‘customer mix’ paradigm includes four key characteristics, each starting with the letter ‘P’:

- People

- Personalities

- Perceptions

- Participation

The twenty-first century is witnessing a new typology of customer. The contemporary customer is more empowered, internet-savvy, has greater access to information in the digital world and is being targeted by organizations in a very competitive environment. The present-day customer has a variety of choices and relies hugely on peer reviews, website information, internet searches and comparisons pertaining to product attributes and prices. Of equal importance is the ability of the customer to create content online by interacting with organizations in the public domain. It is in the interest of marketers to keep customers happy and satisfied to help create a positive word of mouth and an appropriate online reputation.

Marketing now has to deal with customers in a far more structured way through segmentation and profiling endeavours. Each customer has a specific personality, and his relationship with a particular brand becomes the predominant factor in influencing his purchase decisions. However, his individual personality traits also influence the way he interacts with a brand in this digital age. Studies on consumer segmentation have been able to generate consumer profiles, like cognizant techno-strivers, moderate digital ambivalents and techno-savvy impulsive,31 based on individual personality traits and their ability to navigate the digital space. Further studies have generated other classifications, like flamboyant conservatives and internet moderates. Hence, intelligent marketers collect consumer-specific information and create appropriately targeted programs.

Contemporary marketing is also seeing the evolution of the consumer perception paradigm. The reason, again, is the ability of the digital age to influence and reshape consumer perceptions regarding products, brands and services. Changes in perception alter the brand-consumer relationship, issues pertaining to consumer behaviour and the future consumer repurchase intentions.

In an increasingly competitive environment, each player has to compete with several others to attract the consumer’s attention. While the digital world has seen the proliferation of numerous gadgets, methods, online tools, apps and networks, it has also seen the creation of humongous volumes of content. There is now a new problem of information overload for the customer. The answer lies in the engagement of the customer by the organizations and brands and soliciting his participation to provide emotional added value that ultimately will lead to marketing success. top digital marketing agencies Coca-Cola Inc provides various good examples of this, such as the ‘Coca-Cola Village’ in Israel since 2008 and the ‘Share a Coke’ campaign that started in Australia in 2012 and has by now been expanded to over 70 countries.